LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



FIVE LECTURES 



DELIVERED 



BEFORE THE OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 



FOUNDATION OF REV. FREDERICK MERRICK 



BY y 

REV. DANIEL CURRY, LL.D. 



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FIRST SERIES. 



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NEW YORK: HUNT &- EATON 

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1889 



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Copyright, 1889, by 

HUNT <fr EATON, 

New York. 



INTRODUCTION, 



THE lectures embraced in the present volume 
constitute the first series of an annual course 
provided for by the liberality of the venerable Rev. 
Frederick Merrick, ex-president of the Ohio Wes- 
leyan University. After a long life spent in the 
service of this institution, he has crowned his ben- 
efactions by an ample endowment of a foundation 
for a course of lectures, to be deHvered annually in 
the university, on Experimental and Practical Re- 
ligion, The following extract from the instrument 
by which he conveys his entire property to the 
board of trustees for this purpose, explains the 
character of this foundation : 

Extract froin the agreement of Frederick Merrick and the 
Trustees of the Ohio Wesleyan University, 

** The said Frederick Merrick, believing that the 
Christian religion tends, above all else, to the eleva- 
tion of the human race, and that consequently the 
usefulness of institutions of learning largely depends 



4 INTRODUCTION, 

upon the influence of religion prevailing among 
the teachers and pupils, requires, as tending to this 
end, that said trustees shall appropriate at least six 
hundred dollars per annum to secure the delivery of 
a course of, at least, five lectures before the faculty 
and students of said university upon Experimental 
and Practical Religion^ each collegiate year after his, 
the said Frederick Merrick's death ; the lecturer or 
lecturers to be selected by the faculty of said uni- 
versity as early as the month of January preceding 
the collegiate year in which the lectures are to be 
delivered." 

The founder of this course of lectures expressly 
desires that the words which he has adopted to in- 
dicate the range of these lectures shall be under- 
stood in a broad and comprehensive sense. The 
term ^''Experimental Religion^'' thus understood, 
contemplates the Gospel not only as a hidden power 
in the soul, molding the personal character of the 
believer, but as an overt force in the world, shaping 
and controlling the institutions of men. And the 
term ** Practical Religion^' expresses the formal ap- 
plication of the doctrines and morals of the Gospel 
to all the vital issues of the day. Thus understood, 
the Gospel addresses itself not only to the direction 
of the outward life of single individuals, but to the 



INTRODUCTION, 5 

solution and regulation of the many complicated 
questions that spring up in the relations of men with 
one another. Thus all questions involving the 
evangelical work of the Church, all social move- 
ments of modern civilization, all questions of the 
rights and obligations of property and of labor, all 
questions of government, citizenship, and educa- 
tion, all questions of freedom of thought and utter- 
ance, in short, all matters touching on the welfare of 
men, so far as these matters stand related to the 
Gospel of Christ, come within the proper scope of 
these discussions. 

The lecturers on this foundation have accordingly 
a wdde field before them, including whatever the 
Christian religion, as a recognized factor, has done, 
historically, or, by its nature and design, can prop- 
erly be expected to do, in the w^orld. 

The lectures provided for on this foundation w^ere 
intended to begin only after the founder's death. 
But as it was his desire that the first course should 
be delivered by his life-long friend, the Rev. Daniel 
Curry, D.D., then already well advanced in years, 
it was so arranged, at the private expense of the 
founder of the course. The volume before us is the 
result of this wise forethought. Doctor Curry*s 



6 INTRODUCTION, 

sudden death shortly after leaves these lectures 
almost his last service to the Church. 

It is proper to announce here that before this 
volume has met the public eye, the second course of 
lectures on this foundation will have been delivered, 
under the same auspices, by the venerable ex-Pres- 
ident McCosh, of Princeton University, and will 
soon be published in a companion volume. 

W. G. Williams. 

Ohio Wesley an University , 

Delaware, O., March i, 1SS9. 



Christian Education. 



I. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 

THE subject of Christian Education is a very 
broad one, and it has received the attention of 
a very great number of learned and judicious writers. 
We come to it, therefore, without the hope of awak- 
ening interest and gaining attention by novel or 
startling announcements. The importance of the 
subject will, however, justify the reiteration of its 
great truths ; and the relations to the subject in 
all its practical conditions of those whom we are to 
address may be relied upon as a pledge of an inter- 
ested hearing. The wide extent of the subject, and 
the abundance of its matter, render necessary a 
rather broad and therefore general treatment of the 
matters in hand, which, of course, must exclude any 
fullness of details which would otherwise be desir- 
able because of their practical utility ; even from 
among the more general features of the subject with 
which we must deal only a few can be selected 



8 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

for use. Some of these will be given in the succes- 
sive lectures. But, as a pioneer, the work assigned to 
the present lecturer is chiefly to prepare the way for 
those that shall follow; and while it is our high 
privilege to enjoy a priority in time and sequence 
in the series of annual discussions of this all-impor- 
tant theme, we must depend on what shall be done 
by our successors for all that shall make that priority 
an honorable position. We doubt not, however, 
that we shall be heard patiently and judged candidly. 
We ask no more. 

Coming to speak in this presence, as we now do 
at your summons, on the very extensive subject of 
Christian Education, with w^hich large and fruitful 
theme we are to be exercised, it may be well to 
begin with a rapid survey of the situation and its 
environments. We are met as an association brought 
together for the one ruling purpose of giving and 
receiving education. But this general design is here 
to be ostensibly prosecuted for certain well-ascer- 
tained purposes and by definitely-appointed meth- 
ods. We must, therefore, take due cognizance 
of the scope of our appointed work and the agen- 
cies employed, together with their religious intend- 
ments and the ecclesiastical relations in which we 
stand. Our discussions, and the conclusions to which 
w^e may come, must all be in harmony with these 



IN TROD UCTOR V AND GENERAL. 9 

conditions, and they must be so ordered as to 
answer to their requirements. 

We shall be concerned with the general subject 
of education only within the restrictions imposed 
by these conditions. The subject-matter to be 
handled must fall within the specific designation 
Christian, implying that the kind of education now 
to be considered must be of the Christian type. 
Standing among the appointments and appliances 
of this seat of learning, we should also be not un- 
mindful of its paternity and its history, which have 
determined its purposes and dictated its methods. 
Our relations to the Church, and to society at large, 
must enter into the account, and, to some extent, 
give direction to our discussions. 

To receive and to impart instruction is the life- 
long occupation of every rational being, and this 
work is quickened and intensified in proportion as 
men rise in intellectual and moral power. But, be- 
cause childhood and youth constitute the specially 
receptive period of life, young people are usually 
contemplated as eminently the proper subjects of 
education. The ancient Greeks called the whole 
work of education rra^de/a, which in various com- 
binations survives in our own language, always 
retaining its original meaning, and so clearly imply- 
ing that youth is pre-eminently the time of life in 



10 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

which the processes of education mast be chiefly 
effectuated. By both his mental character and his 
conditions the child becomes a learner, and his char- 
acter and career in after life are usually effectually 
and finally determined by what is learned in his 
youth. And accordingly, by the provisions of 
nature, and also by the positive law of God, the 
simplest and the most sacred of the social institutions 
is founded on relations that carry with them the 
opportunities requisite for giving, and the obliga- 
tions to receive, instruction. The family is the 
oldest, and always the most sacred, of human asso- 
ciations ; it is also greater than any other in its 
capabilities for good. This, on the human side, 
becomes by natural stages the tribe and the nation, 
the State; and on the Godward side it becomes the 
Church of the living God, '' of whom the whole 
family in heaven and earth is named.'* In the 
family the child receives the primary lessons that 
usually go with him through life, and effectually 
determine his character and destiny; and to this the 
work of the school is principally auxiliary and sup- 
plementary. So, too, the organic Church springs 
naturally from the family, in which, indeed, the 
church life must begin in respect to both its ordi- 
nances and its instructions in righteousness. The 
mind of childhood and youth calls for both intel- 



INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 11 

lectual and spiritual instruction, and only by the 
harmonious blending of these can its development 
be saved from one-sidedness and deformity; and 
therefore any properly-ordered system of education 
must unite these two elements. These thoughts 
seem to be recognized and emphasized in the things 
among which we are standing. Their implied re- 
quirements should also be practically and effectively 
regarded. 

It is to be presumed that we properly appreciate 
the demands which our position makes upon us, 
and that we cheerfully accept the resultant obliga- 
tions. We are Christians both from convictions 
and associations ; and as educators, our work must 
be conformed to the requirements of that fact ; and 
if so, the instructions that we give will be positively 
and distinctively Christian. We are also specifically 
Methodists — a fact that should not be permitted to 
lose its significance ; and while holding firmly, in 
common with many others, the great catholic veri- 
ties of the Gospel, we also emphasize our apprecia- 
tion of a subjective religious life and experience, to 
be demonstrated in an earnest evangelistical propa- 
gandism. Our form of faith is that of Paul, of 
Luther, and of Wesley ; and of this last, who com- 
bined in his own life, and in complete harmony, 
large intellectual acquirements and a broad and 



12 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

deep spiritual culture, our institution bears the 
honored name. It should be our constant concern 
that all which that name suggests shall be realized 
and made practically effective among us. 

We set out with the concession to ourselves and 
our profession to the Christian public, that accord- 
ing to our view secular learning constitutes only a 
part, and that not the most considerable, of a well- 
rounded education ; and we are also well aware that 
without some good degree of mental training and 
enrichment, the spiritual development is very likely 
to be disproportioned, and the religious life neither 
symmetrical nor wholesome. We do well, therefore, 
to conjoin the two sides of the common whole in 
order to raise up a generation of richly-endowed, 
sturdy, and cultured Christian scholars ; devout 
men of letters, scientists whose open vision will 
not fail to find the foot-prints and the hand-marks of 
the Creator in his works, and statesmen who shall 
guide affairs in righteousness. The w^orld waits to 
see the coming of such a race, which shall combine 
the most luxurious growth of both moral and 
intellectual greatness with the deepest religious 
experience and the most earnest and active conse- 
cration in doing good. Only as they exist and be 
carried on for the accomplishment of these ends can 
the action of the Church in founding and maintain- 



INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL, 13 

ing such institutions be justified. Their reason to 
be is bound up with their earnest purpose to 
accomplish their specific and much-to-be-desired 
work. 

After such an appreciation of the object to be 
reached, the next, and scarcely less important quali- 
fication of the teacher is a just conception of the 
needs and the possibilities of the subjects of his 
instructions and of the character and scope of the 
lessons to be given to them. The efforts of both 
teachers and pupils should be steadily directed 
toward clearly-apprehended ideals, the realization 
of which should be kept in view and earnestly 
striven after. These ideals must embody the best 
style of manhood, in character and conduct ; and 
we shall all agree in saying that such a character 
must be definitely and thoroughly Christian. The 
conviction must be firmly fixed in our minds and 
hearts that the business of our Christian institutions 
of learning, and of our Christian education, is to 
produce, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit 
and the direction of the word of God, well-rounded 
and matured Christian characters, and by their 
multiplication to reconstruct society according to 
the principles of the Gospel. We place before our 
thought the nascent intellect, with its vacuity of 
knowledge, but with large potentialities ; the germ 



14 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

which, rightly cultivated, will certainly become a 
large and productive and beautiful plant. This is 
mind in embryo, which, by its normal unfolding and 
growth, is to determine the value of the work of in- 
struction. The wise teacher knows that this is to 
be done, not by a monstrous or disproportionate 
development of some one faculty, but by the sym- 
metrical education of the whole, and especially with 
a just recognition of the value of the moral and relig- 
ious elements of the character and of its native 
proclivities to evil. Coming thus to his calling 
with the requisite knowledge of the subject to be 
wrought upon, and of the means and methods for 
doing the work, and having a just conception of the 
end to be accomplished, the teacher, if at all com- 
petent to his duties, can scarcely fail in his efforts 
for the development of noble and worthy char- 
acters. 

The one and only subject upon which the processes 
of education are to be performed is the human 
mind, the rational man, beginning with him in his 
infantile immaturity. We might speak of the phys- 
ical man, with his animal life and instincts all tending 
to completeness ; but for that department of our 
being Nature itself has made the needful provisions, 
and only asks to be allowed to complete its work 
with the least possible interference. The care of 



IN TROD UC TOR V AND GENERAL, 15 

the body is therefore only secondarily and remotely 
a part of the work of education. Or, we might delay 
to consider the physical instincts which belong to 
man in common with all other animals, and all in- 
terference with which tends not to improve, but to 
pervert or destroy. But of these we need say nothing, 
since they require no teaching, but only to be let 
alone. Mind, in the proper sense of that term, can 
be predicated only of man, of all the denizens of our 
world ; and in the human subject it at first appears 
only as an unrealized potentiality. But, like every 
other new-born living thing, it has the instincts of 
growth, which, among possible conditions, certainly 
reaches out to the consummation of its tendencies. 
None of the distinctive characteristics of an intelli- 
gent soul — neither intellect, nor taste, nor conscience 
— can be predicated of the mind of the new-born 
infant ; and yet all these are sure to appear in its 
normal development, unless it shall be effectually 
dwarfed and depressed, even to monstrosity, by un- 
favorable environments. Among suitable conditions 
the seed invariably becomes a plant *' after its kind,*' 
and the bud unfolds into foliage and fruit ; and so 
the mind has its ideal possibilities which it instinct- 
ively seeks to realize, and which are perfected or 
spoiled according to its opportunities. Its sur- 
roundings become its effective educating agencies, 



16 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

and the subject infallibly attains to knowledge and 
taste and conscience (the last in both its discrimi- 
nating and its impulsive qualities) according as it is 
instructed. And precisely here are the conditions 
that make education both possible and necessary. 
The impelling force is the spontaneous struggling 
of the mind after growth and form; but these tend- 
encies may be quickened or repressed by extra- 
neous causes, or their development may be modified 
so as to fashion the character after the desired 
model, for more or less and for better or worse. We 
are speaking, of course, of tendencies which may or 
may not be realized, but which will in most cases 
result in accomplished facts. 

To become educated, after some sort or fashion, 
is the certain destination of every rational being. 
Even a Casper Hauser, shut up in his dungeon from 
his birth, and not allowed to see or hear any thing, 
still gains some notion of the world beyond himself 
by the senses of touch and taste and smell. But 
whenever all the senses are permitted to operate 
freely among suitable conditions, the mind becomes 
thoroughly awakened to activity, and at length it is 
stored with ideas. The external world in which he 
exists is the child's primary school, and, with only 
the fewest additional aids, also of the untaught sav- 
age, with whom the principal conditions of child- 



IN TROD UC TOR Y AND GENERAL, 17 

hood are continued through his whole Hfe-time. In 
her teachings Nature deals freely in object-lessons, 
with the appliances for which her school-rooms 
are abundantly supplied ; but without the kindly 
instructions of the living teacher these are only very 
partially available. The discoveries of modern 
science demonstrate nothinof else so marvelous as 
the fact that, in the presence of all the phenomena 
of the material world, even learned men have lived 
and died, in long lines of successive generations, 
without seeming to see them, and, of course, with- 
out any notion of their significance. To learn to 
observe and intelligently interpret the things that 
confront the senses is itself no inconsiderable item 
of a practical education ; and for this work the help- 
ful offices of the teacher are necessary. 

The world is a vast museum crowded with objects 
that potentially illustrate every part of the science 
of nature, but until comparatively recently most of 
the things that now so clearly teach the history and 
philosophy of the material world were as unintelli- 
gible as the pages of a book written in an unknown 
tongue. The fault was not in the organs of sense, 
for these appear to be especially keen and active 
with the child and the savage, but in the defect of 
instructed and disciplined aptitudes of mind to per- 
ceive what is obvious and to interpret Nature^s 
2 



18 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

teachings. In natural researches men find what 
they look for ; and they that do not seek will cer- 
tainly fail to find ; and the same rule applies with 
but slight modifications in matters of metaphysical 
and spiritual inquiry. This, indeed, is the basis of 
the parable of the preacher, "The wise man's eyes 
are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness/' 
Every one gifted with a normally-constituted physi- 
cal system has all the apparatus needed for the ac- 
quisition of knowledge ; is capable of becoming edu- 
cated ; and has decided natural tendencies of mind 
toward the realization of all these possibilities. 
The senses themselves need no teaching, but the 
perceptive faculties, by which the offices of the 
senses are made available, though naturally obtuse 
and slow of development, may become acute and 
of wide range by the aid of instruction and disci- 
pline. The mind, in its primary state, is both empty 
and helpless till aroused by sensations from without, 
from which many of its first lessons are received ; 
and beyond these very simple things it must be led 
forward by instruction ; and if so guided its possible 
attainments are practically unlimited. 

The wise educator must, therefore, begin with the 
recognition of the instinctive tendencies of the mind 
to unfold itself by virtue of its sense-perceptions 
and of its resultant subjective conceptions. The 



IN TROD UC TOR V AND GENERAL. 19 

influence of knowledge upon the mind is directly 
good and wholesome. It increases the soul's capa- 
bilities, affords it healthful exercise, and by supplying 
food for thought it invigorates its thinking powers. 
Truth in the mind, of any kind and respecting what- 
ever subject, exercises an elevating influence, and 
therefore it increases the soul's acquired wealth and 
also its capabilities for both acquiring and appreciat- 
ing its own stores. The education that is designed 
to result in a noble and symmetrical character should 
not fail to build for itself a broad and deep founda- 
tion, made up of all the knowledge of the schools. 
The alphabet and the conventional value of its 
letters, the combination of these to form words 
to serve as vehicles of thought, and these duly 
freighted and their burdens borne inward and treas- 
ured up in the understanding, not only increase its 
knowledge but develop and enlarge its powers. 
The intuitions of numbers and quantities, with their 
combinations and proportions (we call them mathe- 
matical axioms, which we can neither prove nor 
doubt), because, unless carefully studied, they 
cannot proceed beyond the simplest problems, 
become means of instruction almost exclusively as 
the kindly offices of the teacher render them avail- 
able. Though such merely natural knowledge is not 
of itself sufficient to fashion the character in its 



20 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

completeness, its certain tendency and the mind's 
occupation with its processes are favorable to the 
development of the very best spiritual aspirations. 
The wise character-builder, whose ideal is the per- 
fection of the soul's possibilities, will begin his 
work at the foundation, since the lessons of primary 
instruction precede in both the order of time and 
of natural sequence all that is comprised in higher 
education. The true conduct of life consists in the 
right adjustment of the lower with the higher ele- 
ments of man's nature, and the latter can be held 
in its proper supremacy only as it is strengthened and 
furnished for its work. An empty mind, an uncult- 
ured spirit, is comparatively powerless against the 
animal impulses, and the body can be kept under 
only as the mind becomes occupied and employed 
with higher intellectual and spiritual thoughts and 
exercises. 

But both our sense-perceptions and our purely 
intellectual intuitions reach out in their influences 
beyond simple logical reality ; they tend continually 
to ally themselves to the aesthetical and the ethical, 
the sense of beauty and fitness, or their opposites, 
and of right and wrong in character and conduct. 
In addition to the logical knowledge that comes to 
the mind by its perceptions and resultant concep- 
tions there appear also its likes and dislikes, and 



IN TROD UCTOR V AND GENERAL. 21 

also ethical approvals and disapprovals. The prac- 
tical instructor must therefore duly recognize these 
original elements of mind, since any system of edu- 
cation which fails to accord them their proper con- 
sideration must be disastrously defective. The 
mind is one, and in its furniture no truth stands 
apart and alone ; and in all properly-ordered educa- 
tion there is much more than simply a collection 
and correlation of facts; but these also extend their 
influence to and tend to fashion the whole spiritual 
being. The lessons taught in the schools, even the 
most abstract and secular, naturally exert a health- 
ful moral influence (unless perverted by other causes) 
upon the minds of the learners; and only in that 
fact do we find a justification of the policy that the 
Church shall become the promoter and patron of 
secular as well as of sacred learning. 

But, before proceeding further, we must return to 
our former line of thought, which needs to be 
further pursued and its details elucidated. We 
have seen that the mind's capacity and appetencies 
for knowledge are to be responded to by the lessons 
of instruction. The outward organs supply the re- 
quired sensations from which proceed the sense- 
perceptions, and through these the subjective self 
comes into consciously recognized relations w^ith the 
objective world. Then the inward thought, the 



22 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

mind acting introspectively, is turned toward its 
own processes, dealing with what has been received 
from without, mingled with and modified by its 
own original suggestions. Thus the soul rises into 
its appropriate sphere of knowledge, which is 
broader than the farthest stretch of thought, with 
power in itself to apprehend and appropriate truth. 
The objective world is now seen standing over 
against the subjective self, each another than its 
alternate. And now Casper Hauser is brought out 
of his dungeon to look upon the sky and the sunlit 
earth as something quite apart from himself, and 
with which he must become acquainted. And from 
this point his increase of knowledge will be only in 
degree and form, not in kind. Science is one in its 
essential nature, though its objects, and therefore 
its forms, are innumerable ; and the pupil that has 
learned to recognize his own individuality has taken 
the initial lesson upon which all further learning 
must be built. 

Consulting the mind's reports of its own active 
states we are introduced to two other spiritual 
systems in the soul quite distinct from and inde- 
pendent of the domain of the merely logical under- 
standing. In one of these we become aware of cer- 
tain states of mind which seem to be related to ex- 
ternal objects, somewhat in the nature of effects and 



INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 23 

causes, which give rise to a peculiar form of pleasure 
and displeasure, of delight and disgust, quite inde- 
pendent of their external and sensible properties. 
This capability of the spiritual nature, which is 
clearly original and ultimate, because it wants a 
name we designate Taste, and describe it^ as the 
aesthetical faculty. By this the conscious spirit be- 
comes cognizant of the existence of an element in 
its own being quite different from the logical under- 
standing, and to which it intuitively assigns a higher 
place. And since this is an integral element in 
man's nature it demands appropriate cultivation, in 
order that the character shall be symmetrically 
developed ; and in proportion to the proficiency 
attained in these things will the subject of instruc- 
tion be raised into a higher plane of life and 
thought, and his capabilities of receiving and im- 
parting pleasure w^ill be increased. The sesthetical 
faculty properly developed and disciplined opens to 
the soul's consciousness a new and richly-furnished 
sphere of existence, without the know^ledge of 
which there cannot be completeness of character. 

Of similar characteristics in many particulars, but 
incomparably more lofty and authoritative, is the 
ethical element, which manifests itself to the interior 
consciousness, but which also recognizes its external 
object ; and this it instinctively invests with all the 



24 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

sacred attributes of power and wisdom and essen- 
tial righteousness ; the reproduction of which in the 
human soul becomes formulated in the ideas of 
right and wrong, of duty and responsibility. In- 
tellectual truth, when consciously manifested, is 
freely assented to, and no more than that is re- 
quired. So, too, the beautiful is recognized and 
valued, but only for itself and the pleasure that it 
affords. But the sense of right is also a sense of 
duty, commanding homage and devotion, and the 
heart instinctively assents to the claim as the most 
fitting and the duty imposed as paramount. This 
faculty — we call it the conscience — dominates the 
whole man, and asserts its authority over not only 
the conduct of the life, but also and pre-eminently 
over the inward spirit and intents of the heart. 
And as this is among the earliest of the mind's in- 
tuitions, and of perpetual force and obligation, it 
should be assigned no secondary place in the educa- 
tion of every rational soul. 

These things suggest what should be the prac- 
tical work of the educator. He must have some 
just notion of the capabilities and the wants of the 
subjects of his teaching, and of the required agencies 
and methods for doing his work: the fashioning of 
a character learned, cultivated, and thoroughly 
conscientious. 



INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 25 

Because the beginning of the mind's develop- 
ment is in the sense-perceptions, the quickening and 
disciphning of the perceptive faculty is a primary 
necessity in education. No faculty is capable of 
a greater increase of its powers, and scarcely any 
other is so much and so generally neglected ; for 
most men go through life with only the scantiest 
knowledge of the things that lie all about them. 
The external world is a vast lyceum richly provided 
with the appliances for instruction ; but these be- 
come available only as they are applied and their 
nature and action interpreted by those already 
initiated into their mysteries. Each one sees in the 
world the things with which he has come to feel an 
interest, and accordingly the perceptions are affected 
by the moods and habits of the observ^er no less 
than by his purposed attention, and whatever is 
perceived enters into the mind and becomes its 
property and furniture. These considerations in- 
timate to the practical educator what are his work 
and his opportunities ; for as the perceptive faculty 
is the principal subjective agency by which the 
mind may be enriched, and because this is especially 
capable of increase by cultivation, as to both its 
force and its accuracy, to this should his most care- 
ful attention be directed. Here the teacher's own 
ideal becomes especially effective in determining 



26 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

what shall be the special subjects of thought and 
study of his pupils, so that his personal enthusiasm 
may be reproduced among them. Some good 
degree of learning — the more of it the better — is in- 
dispensable for the instructor ; but not less so is pro- 
fessional enthusiasm in respect to the work in hand, 
and relative to both the matter of instruction and in 
its appreciation by his students. The material 
world, which seems at first to present only a vast 
collection of isolated objects and facts, on closer ob- 
servation is found to be pervaded and permeated 
with a deep and far-reaching philosophy; and as at 
first it increases our knowledge it also at length dis- 
ciplines the intellect into a higher style of thought. 
So, too, in respect to the more spiritual exercises 
and attainments, our sense-perceptions are our 
earliest instructors. The world is full of beauty, of 
which, however, only the few whose eyes have been 
opened have any adequate notion, while the moral 
intuitions challenge attention as veritable phenom- 
ena, which, however, prove effective or otherwise in 
proportion as they become objects of earnest and 
interested attention. The first great lesson in prac- 
tical education is how to observe, which, of course, 
requires the quickening and the proper direction of 
the perceptive faculty; and the range of actual ob- 
servation must be as broad as the mind's possibilities. 



INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 27 

The stores accumulated by the sense-percep- 
tions constitute the raw materials of which the 
superstructure of learning must be built up, and 
with which the processes of all educational develop- 
ment must be conducted. It may be conceded, as 
we are often reminded, that learning and education 
are not identical, and that there may be much of 
the former where there is comparatively little of 
the latter. But the converse of that proposition is 
not to be conceded; for learning — a knowledge of 
things — is a pre-requisite to a broad and liberal edu- 
cation. Each item of knowledge that enters into 
the mind has its educating capabilities, and usually 
a man's culture, as well as his intelligence, holds 
pretty close relations with his acquaintance with 
things. Gradgrind's preference for ^' facts " as the 
chief element in school instruction was not, therefore, 
necessarily so absurd or altogether wrong as it is 
sometimes assumed to be; for these, stored in the 
memory, need not be like the hoard of the miser, 
useless and unavailable lumber, but rather they are 
the elementary substances which, cast in the crucible 
of the mind, are wrought out into systems of 
thought which fashion the soul's thinkings and be- 
lievings, its sentiments and its whole condition. 

In this preliminary discussion we have purposely 
only very incidentally and briefly referred to that 



28 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

which must constitute the principal feature of what 
must be further considered by us— the rehgious ele- 
ment in education. We have done this in order, 
first of all, that the subject of education in all its 
breadth may be clearly in mind before passing to a 
single department, though that may be altogether 
the most important. It is necessary, however, in 
viewing the untaught mind upon which the proc- 
esses of education are to be wrought, and while 
indicating the faculties and susceptibilities to be 
dealt with, to recognize that element in man's orig- 
inal nature by virtue of which he may become the 
subject of religious instruction. That man is, in the 
depths of his nature, a religious being, is attested 
by the entire history of the race and by the prac- 
tices and institutions of mankind in all ages and 
countries, and in all states and conditions of society. 
Among the unconscious intuitions of childhood, 
antedating the earliest logical exercises, is the sense 
of duty, with the discrimination of right and wrong 
in both conduct and character; and this the riper 
thinking of later years confirms and intensifies. 
And although these ideas and sentiments are 
evidently quite independent both of the senses and 
the reasoning powers it is certain that no others are 
accompanied by clearer convictions of their essen- 
tial truthfulness. In philosophical language this is 



IN TROD UC TOR Y AND GENERAL. 29 

named the ethical element in the human character; 
in its relations to men*s activities in their social re- 
lations it is styled the moral; and when considered 
in its relations to the supreme object of its devo- 
tion, whose being it intuitively apprehends, we call 
it the religious. By virtue of this element in human 
nature, with its active instincts, the conscious soul 
not only confesses the claims of duty but delights 
to respond to them, and it feels the uplifting of its 
aspirations in worship. And yet, although he is 
the subject of these intuitions and spiritual suscepti- 
bilities and aspirations, still every man comes into 
the world without the knowledge of the only proper 
Object of devotion, of whom indeed he can have no 
adequate conception except as he is taught. And 
in this fact is seen the supreme necessity and im- 
portance of specifically religious education. 

The child, at his awakening to self-consciousness, 
detects the ethical elements in his own nature, and 
instinctively defers to it as the supreme law of life ; 
and over against this stands the parent, w^ho is to 
the child in God*s stead. The '* commandment with 
promise," which enjoins reverence and obedience to 
one's father and mother, standing in the sacred 
decalogue between those that relate directly to God 
alone and those which impose only social duties, 
seems to imply that the required obedience is of 



30 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

the nature of piety. And the frequent and em- 
phatic references to it in the Scriptures seem to 
assume that filial obedience, or the lack of it, in- 
dicates and hastens the tendency of the child toward 
goodness of character and devotion of life, or 
toward sin and impiety. By this divine order the 
home, with its hallowed associations, is consti- 
tuted the primary school, the infant-class, and the 
*' kindergarten," in which, according to God's ap- 
pointment, each one receives his first lessons both in 
science and religion ; and for this there can be no 
adequate substitute. And when the child has out- 
grown his childhood, and a wider field with more 
varied lessons has become necessary, the school 
succeeds to the parent's place, often indeed per- 
forming some of its chief duties very inadequately, 
but needing to maintain, as far as possible, the 
authority and the persuasive power of the house- 
hold. To render this service, at once so important 
and so difficult, is the special office of our Christian 
schools. And may we not say, without fear of con- 
tradiction, that just here we stand among the ap- 
pliances and conditions for the performance of these 
duties? 

We have now attempted to bring before our 
minds the receptive subject upon which the proc- 
esses of education are to be wrought out — mind at 



INTROD UCTOR Y AND GENERAL, 31 

first without knowledge, yet gifted with large sus- 
ceptibilities, and surely growing up to demand in- 
struction and to receive its permanent character by 
means of its education and discipline. We have 
labored to show that the complete, the ideal man, 
must excel in knowledge, in taste, and in virtue, 
and that practically to realize this character is the 
great end of Christian education. At another time 
we will consider more definitely its character and 
conditions. 



32 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 



II. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-ITS CHARACTER AND CAPA- 
BILITIES. 

IN our former lecture, which was designed to be 
only introductory, we endeavored to bring 
clearly into view the rational human subject in his 
formative state as the person upon whom the work 
of practical education is to be performed. We de- 
signed in it to give, though briefly and succinctly, a 
somewhat comprehensive survey and enumeration 
of his natural capabilities and conditions, by virtue 
of which an ideal human character might be brought 
into view. We are now to proceed to a more cir- 
cumscribed field of inquiry, confining ourselves, 
for the purpose of greater definiteness of thought 
and expression, to the capabilities of the mind 
upon which a specifically Christian education is to be 
wrought, together with some of the conditions and 
agencies among which that work must be done. 
Here we shall have occasion to devote especial 
attention to the religious possibilities of human nat- 
ure, of which we said only a very little in what we 
before noticed ; and while recognizing it as the most 
significant part of our general subject yet reserving 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 83 

its fuller and more adequate discussion for the pres- 
ent time. To that part of our subject we come now 
to devote the present hour. 

We have definitely recognized the religious ele- 
ment as an original attribute of the human nature, 
and assumed that it is distinctively the property in 
man that renders him capable of being submitted to 
the processes of a religious education ; we come 
now to consider more in detail the requirements, 
the methods, and the results of those processes in 
their practical operations. We have seen that the 
religious instincts of the soul make themselves felt 
at a very early stage of the life of the subject ; they 
are also among the strongest and most persistent. 
They project themselves into the life unasked, and 
they persistently refuse to be repressed. They are 
found about equally effective among all classes and 
conditions of men ; the savage and the sage are 
alike subject to them. They belong about equally 
to all the periods of the life-time. They manifest 
their presence before the dawning of reason, and in 
all after life they are chief factors in shaping the 
character and actions. They impress the nascent 
intelligence with the ideas of right and wTong ; and 
as they reveal themselves without having been 
learned they are clearly of the nature of intuitions. 

And out of these arise by the simplest and most 
3 



34 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION, 

direct suggestions the notions of duty and responsi- 
bility ; and because they impel the soul to worship, 
and to blindly reach out after a suitable object 
to which its devotions may be rendered, and as the 
mental vision becomes cleared, they postulate God, 
the infinite, possessing the essential attributes of 
personality. 

As with all other intuitions, these are original and 
ultimate, and they are not subject to the reason 
except as their reality is recognized ; for they can 
neither be proved nor doubted, and they are also 
indestructible. Their teachings may indeed be tem- 
porarily overborne and obscured by the force of the 
natural appetites and passions ; but they will come 
again and assert their place in the consciousness. 
If left uncared for and uninformed they readily lead 
to superstition, and in that form degrade the soul 
to spiritual baseness and lead it to ruinous sub- 
jections through debasing forms of worship. If, on 
the other hand, they are resisted, and their resultant 
impulses suppressed, the whole soul is dwarfed and 
deformed, and afterward they return again as tor- 
mentors. 

The first impulse of the religious instinct in man 
is to worship; and this impulse continues operating 
with undiminished force in all the subsequent stages 
of normal spiritual growth. But why it should wor- 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES, 35 

ship it neither asks nor answers, for it is not the busi- 
ness of the instincts to offer reasons for their own be- 
ing. Nor is it, as is often the case with the instincts, 
self-directed to its appropriate object. It therefore 
demands instruction. But if the one supreme and 
only fitting Object of devotion is not found, the 
worship, which cannot be restrained, will be given 
to some inferior Object-creature of the imagination 
— idols, fetiches — which the fancy clothes with some 
of the attributes of divinity; and as is the object of 
worship so is the spiritual estate. A base object of 
devotion debases the character that is devoted to it. 
The connection of morality with religion is neither 
an intuition nor is it the result of any direct instinct- 
ive tendency of the mind. In most religious sys- 
tems the ethical element seems indeed to be entirely 
wanting. No worse crimes have ever been com- 
mitted than those that have been perpetrated in the 
name of religion ; and no lower depths of moral deg- 
radation have ever been reached than have been 
seen in connection with specifically religious observ- 
ances. As flagrant illustrations may be named the 
worship of Bacchus and of Venus among the culti- 
vated Greeks, the murderous rites of the Thugs of 
India, the aiito-da-fes of the Romanists, and the 
** blood atonements *' of the Mormons. It is there- 
fore the peculiar and distinguishing honor of the 



86 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

Christian religion that it makes the purest morality, 
an ideal exaltation of the ethically good, an impor- 
tant and essential element of its substance. And in 
this is seen the indispensable necessity for religious 
education, in order both to direct the soul's aspira- 
tions to the essentially good, and to clothe the 
dictates of righteousness with all the solemn au- 
thority that is intuitively ascribed to the accepted 
object of worship. Men need to be taught whom 
they should worship, what are the attributes that 
distinguish him, and by what authority he demands 
that we should be like him in character and life. 
And in response to this want the God of the Bible 
has revealed to us both his person and his law; the 
one to stand forth as the embodiment of all spiritual 
and moral excellence and the other to dictate our 
actions, and the two acting together to constitute 
the best possible provision for religious culture and 
discipline. 

Conceding, therefore, as we must, the need of a 
revelation directly from God, and accepting the 
holy Scriptures in that character, we find in them 
our sole and all-sufficient guide and instructor in 
respect to both devotion and duty. Of course it is 
no part of our purpose, at this point, to set forth 
the evidences of Christianity, nor to defend the au- 
thority of the Bible; for although these things be 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 37 

matters the discussion of which may not be evaded, 
yet in our present inquiry they must be assumed, 
for the religious education that we are now advo- 
cating is specifically Christian, and our Christianity 
is that of the Bible. 

In the development and growth of man's nature 
the religious element comes forward side by side 
with the animal instincts and psychological tenden- 
cies ; which latter, though not incompatible with 
the largest increase of the former, are not in har- 
mony with the requirements of Christianity, which 
not only claims a place in the mind for the religious 
instincts, but also demands that these, properly in- 
structed and divinely regenerated, shall dominate 
the will and govern the whole life. The demand 
made by Christianity for the complete and exclus- 
ive control of its subjects, including at once the 
thoughts and intents of the heart and the conduct 
of the life, arrays against it all the selfish impulses 
and tendencies of the '' natural man; " and vet in this 
exclusiveness is its strength. To obtain and to hold 
this supreme ascendency of the spiritual over the 
carnal, the religious over the selfish, is the end of 
self-discipline, to aid in which is among the best 
ofifices of Christian education. 

The instinct to worship makes two important 
requirements, obedience to which calls for large 



38 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

subjective readjustments, amounting to a real and 
thorough transformation of the character. It de- 
mands that its object shall combine as personal 
attributes all ideal excellence ; and so it indicates in 
advance what must be the attributes of its divinity. 
This, it is true, is often seen only very dimly, and not 
sufficiently clearly to guide the soul to the apprehen- 
sion of the truth, and especially so since the moral 
intuitions are limited in their action by spiritual 
depravity. And yet these dark feelings after the 
truth instinctively proceed in the right direction, 
and intuitively recognize its object when found. 
No other object of worship than the God of the 
Bible can answer to the instinctive cravings of the 
soul ; and yet, although God*s holiness is approved 
by the conscience, still the dominant impulses of 
the natural man are not in harmony with either his 
attributes or his commandments. 

And yet this instinct confesses, and indeed re- 
quires, that its object should be in every thing su- 
preme, and that the heart and the life should be 
subjected to it. But over against this stands the 
man's own will, claiming the supremacy. Thus there 
is found a schism, a disharmony in the soul, which as 
life progresses inevitably grows into an active hostil- 
ity : '' the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES, 39 

one to the other/' And since the demands of the con- 
science are imperative, and may not be compromised, 
their preference above all others is a pre-requisite 
to the soul's peace. This enthronement of the 
spiritual over the sensuous and natural in man is 
designated in Holy Scripture, *' being born again;*' 
in theological terminology it is called *' regenera- 
tion ; " but we are now to speak of it as the outcome 
of the education of the spiritual man. This work, 
as to its outward aspects, begins with the reception 
of spiritual truth by the understanding, w^hen it at 
once demonstrates its quickening power; for ^' the 
entering in of God's w^ord bringeth light," and 
shows the conscious soul its own needs. It also dis- 
plays its authority, and commands obedience both 
of character and of life. Christian discipleship is a 
pre-requisite to Christian education, which becomes 
effectual only under the *^yoke" of Christ, borne 
and worked in, w^hich is the divinely designated 
method of learning of him, and of coming into that 
state of spiritual harmony that there shall be *' rest 
to the soul." This dominance of the depraved self- 
will is called, in the language of the schools, *' de- 
pravity ; " legally, it is ^* rebellion ; " ethically and 
spiritually, and as related to the divine Law-giver, 
it is sin. 

In nearly all practical education the negative proc- 



40 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

esses are scarcely less important than the positive; 
and especially in religious education to unlearn is 
no less needful than to acquire new thoughts and 
better methods of thinking. New habitudes of 
mini and heart, a reconstruction of the spiritual 
self, are the conditions, both prevenient and subse- 
quent, of effective Christian education. 

Passing now, in our inquiries, from the inward and 
subjective side of our theme to the outward and 
practical, we may next ask what are the methods 
and agencies by which the contemplated work may 
be accomplished? As to the source of the matter 
to be taught, and also largely for the method of 
teaching, we turn with all confidence to the Bible 
as containing an incomparable system of truth and 
duty. It alone reveals to the rational soul the 
spiritual world, the supernatural cosmos, in whose 
atmosphere the supersensuous man lives, and 
moves, and has his being. The things there mani- 
fested, though they belong also to the natural under- 
standing, and largely enhance its stores, more directly 
address themselves to the spiritual nature, both to 
instruct and to transform ; and yet they may become 
comparatively ineffective through neglect or misuse. 
This fatal tendency to rob the truth of its legiti- 
mate power, perhaps to change it to a lie, demands 
especially the counteracting influences of Christian 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 41 

education, and personally of Christian instructors. 
The lessons by which the expanding mind is to be 
edified in the truth, and the footsteps of ingenuous 
but unwary youth are to be guided to the paths of 
wisdom, must be drawn from the sacred treasury of 
truth and wisdom. And here, especially, is the prac- 
tical wisdom of the Christian educator called for, to 
give to each his portion in due season, milk or strong 
meat, as the subject shall be able or have need, and 
every thing administered with the skill of one not 
a novice. 

A special excellence of the Bible as an educating 
agency is the peculiarly human form in which its 
lessons come to us. It is quite possible that truth, 
however abstractly presented, would prove prac- 
tically valuable, but much less so than when set 
forth in concrete forms. In the Bible, however, 
more than almost anywhere else, the highest and 
the essentially spiritual truths appear humanized 
and incarnated; and it was evidently the design 
in the bestowment of these sacred realities that 
they should be cherished in the heart's deepest affec- 
tions and given out from warm and earnest souls. 
Only the smaller part of the influence of the relig- 
ious instructor comes direct from the truths he de- 
clares ; his highest effectiveness goes out from him 
unpurposed, and his best lessons are those which 



43 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION, 

enter unconsciously into the mind and heart of the 
learner. An all-pervading atmosphere of truth and 
goodness is the necessary and the surely effective 
condition of religious instruction. It is this that so 
often makes even the humblest Christian home 
the most successful of Christian seminaries; and as 
far as possible (and beyond what point is it not possi- 
ble ?) the same atmosphere should be reproduced and 
rendered permanently effective in all our Christian 
schools and colleges. It is a sad thought, too often 
realized, that our Christian youth, who have been 
nurtured in homes of piety, when removed to our 
nominally religious seminaries have found them- 
selves in a widely different spiritual atmosphere, 
and exposed to many hitherto unknown tempta- 
tions without compensating safeguards. Our Chris- 
tian homes, with their unworldliness, are the shelter- 
ing frames in which the tender plants are kept secure 
from the blasts of sin till the heart becomes strong 
in truth and goodness. But if too soon removed, 
and if their new environments prove uncongenial, 
how many such must perish miserably ! These 
are thoughts to which the most earnest considera- 
tion should be given, with corresponding practical 
efforts by the founders, curators, and instructors of 
all Christian schools. It is of small account, if the 
institution is only nominally and formally Christian, 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 43 

that its founders were professedly Christian, and 
that it is patronized by an ecclesiastical body, unless 
its whole spirit and purpose shall be distinctively, 
and somewhat intensitively, religious. 

It is not an altogether uncalled-for suggestion 
to say that a school founded and carried on by 
an evangelical Christian denomination should be, 
in fact as well as in name, a religious institution. 
The conventual schools of earlier times (and of 
the present also) embodied the important idea 
that the Church should be a patron of learning, 
and that the education given to the youth of the 
Church should be Christian education. Some of 
the features of those religious institutions may still 
be detected in the traditions of our colleges ; but it 
is to be feared that about all that was distinctively 
religious in them has been eliminated or permitted 
to perish. It may be well that all fanatical and 
ascetic practices have ceased, with all sourness and 
affectation of piety ; but it is not well that instead 
of these our nominally religious schools should be 
given up to intellectual godlessness and negative 
impiety. True religiousness is neither ascetic nor 
fanatical, but healthful, breezy, and robust, while, 
also, it is earnestly devout and delighting to worship. 
And yet even this religious state will not come about 
of itself, and among the many adverse tendencies 



44 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

that are in the world, and from which the best 
Christian communities are not exempt, only the 
most earnest and the best adapted religious culture 
can effectually counteract the almost universal tend- 
ency to backsliding. 

There are also peculiar liabilities to spiritual re- 
missness in some of the conditions of student life. 
Any change from the home-life, with its sacred 
associations and its conservative conditions, is neces- 
sarily not entirely free from peril ; and these may 
be largely increased according to external circum- 
stances or personal characteristics. With even the 
least perversely inclined the mind's occupation with 
its daily studies, and its engrossment by its round 
of duties, may crowd out other and better things, 
and leave neither opportunity nor inclination for 
the special exercises upon which the souTs health is 
dependent. The rapid transition through which the 
mind of the student is passing, with the attainment 
of new intellectual conceptions and the increase of 
purely secular knowledge, render necessary corre- 
sponding increments of spiritual knowledge to 
counteract the mind's tendency to drift away from 
spiritual thoughts and associations, and so to lose 
their saving power. Many a Christian student who 
w^ould have been horrified at the thought of back- 
sliding, has been surprised by discovering that, while 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES, 45 

engaged in his proper studies, all unawares he had 
decHned in spirituality ; that the light in his soul had 
become dim, the ground had slipped from under his 
feet, his first love had grown cold, and that, while 
successfully prosecuting his outward duties, he had 
insensibly, but disastrously, fallen away spiritually. 
These peculiar temptations and dangers of student 
life should especially engage the thoughts of those 
who are charged with the duties, not only of secular 
teachers, but also of religious and spiritual guard- 
ians and guides ; and only as these spiritual wants 
are provided for and imparted by them can the 
action of the Church be justified in devoting its 
means and energies to the founding and sustaining 
of schools and colleges. 

The moral and religious training of large bodies 
of students associated in communities is to a 
great degree mutual and co-operative. Every such 
community has its own prevailing public opinion, 
its peculiar ethical code, and its recognized, though 
unformulated, laws of living. These may possibly 
be Christian, wholesome, and salutary; but there is 
a perilous possibility that they will be quite other- 
wise. At no other point in the administration of 
the affairs of such communities of young persons is 
there so much need of godly wisdom, the very best 
qualities of head and heart conjoined, so as at once 



46 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION, 

to command and persuade. And here the wise ad- 
ministrator will practically confess that in order to 
command he must first persuade ; and he will also 
know that while the heart of youth may stubbornly 
resent the blows of authority it is as plastic as clay 
or wax in the hands of the skillful molder. Students 
are as largely endowed as other persons with the 
usual elements of human nature, and the ordinary 
laws of Christian morality apply to them as fully as 
to others; and to these the Christian instructor may 
always safely appeal. And to such an appeal every 
right-minded body of students will cheerfully re- 
spond, and will fashion their ethical code and pub- 
lic opinion accordingly. And that this may be so, 
those who have the care of the manners and morals, 
and of the spiritual life of masses of young persons 
should see to it that their own personal relations to 
those over whom they would exert a saving influ- 
ence are both intimate and effective. To repress 
and restrain wrong tendencies in associated bodies 
of young people by authority may be difficult or 
impossible; but at the same time to lead out their 
minds, and inspire them with better thoughts and 
purposes, may be easily practicable. This is among 
the high functions of the religious educator. 

As a state of mental increase and enrichment is 
the normal condition of student life, so should the 



/ TS CHAR A C TER A ND CAP A BILI TIES, ATI 

minds of the learners be drawn out into higher and 
broader ranges of reh'gious thinking. The child 
thinks as a child ; but when grown to intellectual 
manhood the childish thinkings, however excellent 
for their time, must be put away. To provide for 
this transition, which is sure to come, a correspond- 
ingly broader range of religious discussions and 
instructions must be brought into requisition. 
Christian ideas must be carried into every depart- 
ment of thought into which the minds of the learners 
are led out, and the spirit and the truth of religion 
must be made to permeate the whole cyclopedia of 
learning. In those wider ranges of thought unsolved 
questions and unresolved doubts will often arise, 
which the habit of independent thinking to which 
we train our young people may render all the more 
perplexing and dangerous. Into these mazes and 
seeming contradictions the teacher must accompany 
his pupils, clearly recognizing them as such; solving 
all reasonable doubts, and restraining undue specu- 
lativeness respecting the many and great moral and 
religious problems which lie beyond the range of 
intellectual knowledge ; for there are bounds beyond 
which finite intelligence may not proceed, and to 
know these is excellent knowledge, and to practically 
confess them a high style of wisdom. 

The basis of personal faith changes with the 



48 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

changed conceptions of things which occur, in a 
greater or less degree, in the history of every indi- 
vidual ; and these are unavoidably attended with 
peril. A man's notions respecting spiritual things 
at threescore are not the same that he entertained 
in childhood and youth ; and the extent of these 
transitions is greatest with those who make the 
largest advances in knowledge and cultured think- 
ing. The faith of the child is pure and simple, ac- 
cepting whatever is declared by competent authority, 
and in the absence of other knowledge it is not 
troubled with any apparent difficulties or contra- 
dictions. But with riper years come also broader 
views, which suggest many and very perplexing 
questions; and these, if they relate to things that 
may be known, must be satisfactorily solved, or else 
they will become occasions of established doubtings, 
marring the symmetry of the faith of the soul and 
removing it from its steadfastness. Could one live 
and die among conditions that effectually separate 
him from the possibility of any considerable mental 
growth the faith of childhood might be perpetuated ; 
but not in its simplicity and purity, since the mind's 
own activities would inevitably store the imagination 
with a multitude of gross and debasing superstitions. 
It is not, therefore, without some show of reason that 
the Church of Rome disapproves of the unlimited 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 49 



diffusion of religious knowledge among the un- 
learned, holding that learning genders doubts and 
heresies, while '' ignorance is the mother of devo- 
tion." But the faith that subsists because of igno- 
rance is itself feeble and unsteady, and the devotion 
that it promotes is not that "pure worship" by 
which God is glorified and the soul of the devotee 
enriched. The position of Protestantism in respect 
to this matter is the extreme opposite of that of 
Romanism ; and, because it holds that true Chris- 
tian knowledge is both the promoter and the guard- 
ian of saving faith, and a sure source of robust and 
wholesome Christian character, it claims for every 
man the privilege and the duty to know for himself 
what are the great and essential truths of religion, 
which every Christian should know as of the essence 
of his creed, and which he is bound to believe to the 
saving of his soul. And as we would have all men 
know the truth because we believe it to be incom- 
parably preferable to a form of faith that outrages 
the understanding and dwarfs the spiritual being, so 
\WQ are also aware that the darkness of ignorance 
which engendered the sickly devotions of the clois- 
ter and the confessional, the worship of pictures 
and crucifixes, and w^hich demands the surrender of 
one's soul w^ith unquestioning subjection to the will 
of a man, has, as to ourselves and among the condi- 



50 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

tions in which we live, become forever impossible. 
As we would not, if we could, have the common 
people untaught in the truths of religion, so we 
could not, if we would, remand them to ignorance of 
the truth and a condition of intellectual and spiritual 
slavery. We must, therefore, accept the conditions 
imposed by the free thought of the people, with its 
consequent labors and perils. 

Education, unless it embodies a large and broad 
religious element, tends inevitably to skepticism. 
If the individual has in himself, by virtue of his 
Christian life and the Spirit's testimony to the 
reality of spiritual things, a constantly assured faith, 
he will be able successfully to overcome such temp- 
tations to unbelief. But such cases, though happily 
not rare, must be considered as exceptional ; and 
therefore every student should be considered as 
needing to be perpetually grounded anew in the 
faith. Any system of education, therefore, that is 
not clearly and distinctively religious is dangerous 
to the Christian stability and the moral characters 
of the learners. Religion must be kept steadily in 
view in every department of instruction ; not merely 
a philosophical naturalism and a conventional moral- 
ity, but the system of truth and doctrine of which 
God is the source and center, Christ the revealer 
and apostle, and the Bible the heaven-given depos- 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 51 

itory. And this system must be presented, not as 
something that must be blindly accepted in defer- 
ence to its authority, but with accompanying proofs 
and evidences which shall effectually counterwork 
the mind's natural tendency to unbelief. Glorious 
and venerable as are the truths of Christianity, and 
powerful as it is to demonstrate its divinity to the 
spiritual consciousness of all who have received its 
truth in the love of it, it is still needful to demon- 
strate its credibility by reasons addressed to the 
natural understanding. The teacher having re- 
moved, as certainly he will, the pupil's traditional 
form and foundation of religious beliefs, is now 
bound to build him up on other and better evidences. 

That we may impress these thoughts the more 
deeply, we reiterate them, even at the risk of seem- 
ing to repeat ourselves. 

The Christian educator should be profoundly im- 
pressed with the conviction and consciousness that 
he is leading his pupils through a stage of mental 
development that is peculiarly full of perils. In 
childhood we believe what we are taught, and the 
religious intuitions respond approvingly to the 
lessons of spiritual instruction, and we believe, not 
because we have been convinced by arguments, but 
on the authority of our teachers. And this unques- 
tioning faith continues through life, wherever there 



52 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

is real teachableness, and where also the wider 
excursions of thought do not come in to demand 
the reasons for the things that are to be believed. 
The undeveloped understanding, if accompanied by 
a devout heart, may be satisfied with the hearths 
assurance of the truths of religion ; but in the 
absence of such a religious experience there usually 
occurs with the unlearned a blind and stupid nega- 
tion of faith, while the better educated find their 
natural unbelief formulating its objections into sys- 
tems of positive doubts. Educated minds demand, 
as they have the right to do, a rational basis for 
whatever is to be believed. Here, however, is the 
point of danger in the mental and spiritual history 
of all who make the transition state from infantile 
dependence to individual freedom of thought ; and 
here, too, not a few disastrous shipwrecks of faith 
and a good conscience have taken place, and this 
especially among the abler students in our colleges. 
This significant and momentous truth must, 
therefore, be confronted and provided for. Educa- 
tion, it should be known, except it has a decided 
infusion of specifically Christian elements, tends 
directly and with fatal certainty toward skepticism, 
and to beget a spirit of destructive questionings 
respecting all that pertains to supernatural religion; 
and therefore any system of education is of danger- 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 53 

ous tendency that does not so present the basis of 
the Christian evidences as to answer to the natural 
and not unreasonable questionings of cultivated 
minds which have been removed away from the 
implicit faith of their childhood. 

The natural relations of instructors and learners 
imply, on the side of the former, a thorough and 
comprehensive acquaintance with the subjects to be 
handled, with their conditions and relations, and 
with these is conjoined the authority that is legiti- 
mately derived from mental superiority and from 
the official positions of accepted teachers. And on 
the side of the learners are confidence in the supe- 
rior wisdom of those w^ho teach and deference 
toward their opinions ; but also, and beyond these, 
personal independence of thought must be recog- 
nized, and the just demand that for every utterance 
of doctrine or opinion a reason shall be given. 
We may confidingly trust that not a few of those 
who sit at these fountains of learning have other 
and better forms of Christian evidences than can be 
given by man to man ; but that may not be pre- 
sumed in respect to all; and even where it is found 
it needs to be continually supplemented and re- 
enforced by external evidences, especially with those 
whose habits of thinking are logical as well as 
intuitional, whose subjective faiths require the con- 



54 CHRIS TIAN ED L/C A TION, 

currence of objective reasonableness in the things 
propounded. 

Remitting any consideration of the evidences of 
Christianity, Avhich, however, should be formally 
presented and elaborated in the curriculum of col- 
legiate education, we may glance for a moment 
at certain incidental forms of proofs that are sug- 
gested by the religious intuitions themselves. The 
soul's impulse to worship requires for its legiti- 
mate use an object upon which it may be exer- 
cised ; and therefore — agreeably to the obvious and 
apparently universal law, that an original want im- 
plies the existence of that which may answer to its 
demands — that impulse authorizes the presumption 
of the existence of some one possessing in his 
own person all the natural and moral perfections 
which the soul instinctively requires in the object 
of its devotions. And to this demand no other one^ 
real or ideal, except tile God of the Bible, the 
Christian's God, makes even an approximation to a 
satisfactory response. There are "' gods many and 
lords many ; " but no one of these measures up to 
the soul's intuitive ideal of the object of its admiring 
devotion, and therefore the thoughtful w^orshiper 
turns away from these abortive begettings of the 
imagination, darkly feeling after the Unsearchable, 
and asks for something better, and perhaps in his 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 55 

blindness he sets up his altar, ^^ To the Unknown 
God/' assuming that God is, but is to him unknown. 
The Apostle's announcement on Mars' Hill is of 
universal acceptation ; that which the heart instinct- 
ively demands, the unknown object of its untaught 
worship, is clearly revealed in the Scriptures. The 
whole world — the universe of thought, say the wise 
ones — is made up of correspondences, of pairs, each 
one of whose members implies the existence of the 
other. There is light for the eye, and sounds for 
the ear, and hardness for the touch ; there are 
order, beauty, and sublimity that answer to the 
aesthetical requirements of man's nature ; and so 
there are infinite power, wisdom, and goodness em- 
bodied as essential attributes of the God of the 
Bible ; and in him the soul's instincts to worship find 
all their requirements met with absolute fullness. 
This form of Christian evidence, while it may be 
appreciated by the least cultivated, loses none of its 
power in the clearest light and the furthest reach 
of cultured thought, and to its impressiveness even 
the least spiritually-minded cannot be entirely 
insensible. This ** coigne of vantage " should be 
occupied and turned to account by the Christian 
educator; the heart wants its God — will worship 
him if found. It is his duty to guide the inquiring 
spirit to that which it seeks. 



56 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

These natural wants of the soul reproduce them- 
selves in forms modified according to their changed 
conditions in human society, that more compre- 
hensive individual sometimes called humanity. It 
craves to be organized, is miserable till that is af- 
fected, and yet its constituent elements, left to their 
own perverseness, seem to be incapable of coming 
into a harmonious unity. The individual cannot 
attain to any thing at all worthy of his own possi- 
bilities except in co-operation with others ; and yet 
as seen in his natural estate every man's hand seems 
to be against his fellow. War appears to be the 
normal condition of the race, and accordingly the 
same word may designate with equal fitness a 
stranger and an enemy. But Christianity, by molli- 
fying the natural savagery of the individual and 
by infusing into the soul an all-comprehending 
spirit of divine charity — so changes the spiritual 
polarity of the social elements that man tends in- 
stinctively to his fellow-man; and the mass, hitherto 
disintegrated and inharmonious, now, by the im- 
pulses of each heart, readily crystallizes into a 
beautiful and harmonious unity. For this the social 
philosopher has no alternate or substitute ; and be- 
cause man is by his natural instincts, and by all the 
requirements of his nature, a social being, Chris- 
tianity is the first necessity for his temporal wel- 



ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 57 

fare. A state of facts so obvious and so sug- 
gestive ought not to be neglected by the Christian 
educator, both on account of their relations to the 
Christian evidences and their practicable availability 
in adapting men to the high duties and relations 
of the Commonwealth. In every department of the 
social and political sciences, as well as in the more 
abstract philosophy of the intellect and the heart, 
there is need of the specifically Christian element. 
It is, indeed, present both as a fact in the world's 
history and as an effective factor among the working 
forces of society. Its recognition, and the illustration 
of its methods and its effectiveness, and the inculca- 
tion of its spirit, should therefore constitute a 
primary element in the lessons announced from 
these professional chairs. As the great end of edu- 
cation is to render its subjects capable at once 
of the highest personal excellence and to make 
them the best possibly adapted to promote the 
social w^elfare, and as these qualifications result the 
most surely and effectively from the Christian ele- 
ment in education, it is plain that any system of in- 
struction is excellent or defective in proportion to 
the presence or absence of the Christian element. 
The injunction of the Master, ** Learn of me," has 
a much wider application than to personal religious 
life. 



58 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 



III. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-ITS PURPOSE-THE WHAT-FOR 

OF EDUCATION. 

CONCEDING the desirableness of education — 
which, indeed, all our conditions take for 
granted — it is pertinent that we should ask, What 
is its purpose and in what consists its value ? To 
this question we may answer in the words of a liv- 
ing writer of high renown — Mr. Herbert Spencer — 
though we would give to his words a much broader 
application than he does. He tells us, *' To prepare 
us for complete living is the function which educa- 
tion has to discharge.'' We accept this statement 
as both comprehensive and felicitous, and also as well 
adapted to suggest both the object to be pursued 
in practical education and the methods of doing the 
work. But we should not confine our considera- 
tions to merely secular affairs, as Mr. Spencer's 
unspiritual philosophy compelled him to do ; but 
seeing in our broader outlook other than merely 
secular relations, which qualify and vastly elevate 
our conception of " complete living," we must com- 
prehend in the measure and scope of the things to 
be cared for in education all that relates to the spir- 



ITS PURPOSE, 59 

itual life ; and as we claim that these are incompa- 
rably the greatest of our interests, and that '' com- 
plete living" is especially concerned in them, we 
must also contend that the spiritual character of its 
subject is the chief concern in practical education. 

Our notions as to what education is for and what 
it is designed to accomplish for its subjects, will 
largely determine both its substance and its methods. 
These we have already indicated as consisting in 
the proper development and discipline of all that 
belongs to man's real nature ; and manifestly, 
therefore, the neglect of any part of his essential 
manhood must result in an unsymmetrical and un- 
wholesome condition of the mind and character. 
Education is neither designed to extirpate nor to 
suppress any of the elements of human nature origi- 
nally given by the Creator, but to afford to each due 
opportunities and helps for their full and propor- 
tionate increase. And yet, while all these should 
be duly cared for, still, since some are more excel- 
lent than others, more immediately vital and prac- 
tically valuable, these should have the preference, 
and the others in their proper order should be sub- 
ordinated. This is according to the infallible 
teachings of holy Scripture, which recognizes all 
our wants and provides for their supply, but for 
each in the order of their excellence. The inhibi- 



60 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

tions of some things, while others are enjoined, 
must be understood in many cases as relative rather 
than absolute, as when we are taught to ** take no 
thought for the body/' or ''for the morrow," but 
instead, to seek first ''the kingdom of heaven." 

It is especially needful that in our conceptions of 
the subject we should be guarded against the perils 
of a merely sensuous worldliness, caring only for 
the material and secular, to which there is so often 
an undue tendency; and nowhere else is this cau- 
tion more needful than in practical education. 

Men are not often better than their own ideals in 
either life or character. In that fact, and the causes 
which lie back of it, is seen the great value of noble 
and w^orthy conceptions of one's possibilities and 
the desirableness of lofty aspirations. The original 
purpose of every creature is indicated by his con- 
stitution and capabilities, and even his felt wants 
and instinctive hungerings and thirstings are proph- 
ecies of what may be realized. Each one, also, who 
rises above the lowest sensuousness in his wants 
has his ruling purposes, toward the achievement of 
which he directs his efforts, and in the success of 
which he rejoices. But it often happens that this 
success most clearly demonstrates the emptiness 
and insufficiency of the things that are earnestly 
coveted ; and accordingly the lament of ** the 



ITS PURPOSE. 61 

Preacher," who spoke also as the wisest of men 
and the wealthiest of monarchs, " Vanity of van- 
ities, all is vanity," has been the common refrain of 
those who have reviewed a career of merely worldly 
success, while spiritual things were disregarded. 

But in order to give a practical direction to our 
thoughts we will now consider some of the pur- 
poses of education as they are viewed among men. 
The lowest, and also the most prevalent, is that of 
a merely personal secularism, in the estimation of 
which education seems valuable chiefly as the means 
of gaining a livelihood. This, in the language of 
its own school, is the ''bread-and-butter" argument. 
Nor are we disposed to altogether despise even this. 
It may be conceded that if education only helps its 
subject the better to provide for his physical wants 
it does a good work, though surely not its best. 
The irrational brutes have their natural wants, and in 
the order of nature and by means of their untaught 
instincts God cares for them. But for man, who is 
a rational soul, made in the image of God, to be 
shut up within these conditions surely cannot be 
accounted '' complete living." And still it may be 
granted that the skilled mechanic is better than the 
unskilled laborer, who is also better than the un- 
taught savage ; the engineer is more than the fire- 
man or coal-heaver ; the artisan whose deft hand is 



62 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

the instrument of a disciplined mind is of more 
account than he whose Hfe is only a manifestation 
of brute force directed by his untaught will. The 
learned professional — the counselor and orator — 
are better paid, and worthily so, than the multitude 
of the unlearned about them ; but even in their 
cases their superiority is chiefly in the incidental 
results of their better mental training. It is quite 
evident that in the struggle for existence, which is 
so fiercely contested in civilized society, the edu- 
cated have very considerable advantages over the 
uneducated ; and, therefore, were there no higher 
motives, that fact would suffice in favor of giving 
the advantages of education to as many as possible. 
There is cause to fear, however, that this, the low- 
est and the least worthy purpose of education, may 
be made the ruling one, and so the character and 
kind of the education desired may be unfavorably 
affected by it. All this, indeed, is much more than 
an indistinct apprehension of a possible evil ; it is 
already upon us, and its presence is felt in all our 
schools, from the lowest to the highest. The care- 
ful parent, provident of the secular welfare of his 
children, sees in their education the best assurance 
of their success in life ; and young persons looking 
out into the future think they see in that direction 
the most promising prospects ; and so education is 



ITS PURPOSE, 63 

chosen as the best assurance of simply material suc- 
cess. This, perhaps, should not be denounced as 
positively bad ; it is, indeed, relatively better than 
brutish unculture and savage improvidence ; but the 
motive is unelevated, and the results in those who 
are swayed by it must be comparatively disastrous. 
Our whole system of public education is just now 
assailed with a loud and imperious demand in favor 
of such changes in the course of instruction that (in 
the language of the complainants) education shall 
be more *' practical ; '' and by this is meant, that 
education shall be so ordered that it shall become 
more surely and immediately available for making 
money or securing pecuniary interests. And accord- 
ingly our highest institutions of learning, the old- 
est and the most renowned colleges and universities 
in the country, are modifying their course of study 
in favor of '* technical '' education, with necessarily 
corresponding disfavor toward those that tend, first 
of all, toward culture — that w^hich shall educate the 
whole man, and especially the higher and more spir- 
itual elements of his character, instead of those that 
remove him in the least degree from merely me- 
chanical forces and the operations of dumb animals 
and inanimate machines. We ask, on the contrary, 
that the instruction to be given in our schools shall 
aim to develop and fashion lofty intellectual and 



64 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

spiritual character, with knowledge and appreciation 
of things that lie beyond the range of the senses — 
that is, the true, the beautiful, and the good — rather 
than, the most complete machines the more effect- 
ually to minister to the grosser wants of men's nat- 
ures. Our objection to thus secularizing education, 
and compelling it, like blind Samson, to grind in the 
mill, is not only that it is a diversion from a higher 
to a lower purpose, but, still more, that it is a pros- 
titution of the noblest capabilities to gross and cor- 
rupting uses. Productive industry is a necessity, 
and, properly managed, tends to public and pri- 
vate welfare ; but unless subordinated by a strong 
will to other and higher interests it readily becomes 
an evil of no ordinary proportions. Its ideal is 
an unelevated one, and it necessarily leads to cor- 
respondingly unelevated pursuits and associations. 
The cultured mind craves a better portion than any 
thing that can be entered in the merchant's ledger 
or disposed of by devise; a treasure even for pres- 
ent use that moth and rust cannot corrupt, nor 
thieves take away. There is indeed a ** wisdom '* 
whose ** merchandise is better than that of silver, 
and the gain thereof than fine gold," to obtain and 
retain which is the purpose of education ; and of that 
design it is capable if it shall be faithfully directed 
to it. And shall an agency of such noble capabil- 



ITS PURPOSE. 65 

ities be desecrated to the grosser forms of material 
acquisitions ? To live only in order to devote one's 
energies to money-making certainly is not *^ com- 
plete living." Men's better natural sentiments unite 
their protests with those of religion against the 
desecration. 

A less gross and materialistic purpose for which 
education may be sought, if not higher in the scale 
of morality, is to increase its possessor's ability to 
serve himself; for men have learned the practical 
wisdom of the maxim, '' If thou doest well by thy- 
self all men will speak well of thee." Because of 
its power to elevate the character and to increase 
the mental resources of its subjects, and to give 
men influence among their fellows, the ambitious 
and self-seeking may very naturally desire to avail 
themselves of the benefits of education. Of the 
greatness of the advantages, in respect to these 
things, of thorough mental training there can be no 
question. In nearly every possible position in life 
the educated man has the advantage over the un- 
educated, and in many places — and these the most 
influential and remunerative — only the educated can 
enter, or, having gained a place, can either respond 
to its claims or utilize its opportunities. The shrewd 
and wisely-calculating parent, seeing these things, 

chooses that his son shall be educated, that he may 
5 



66 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION. 

thus be the better prepared to engage in life's bat- 
tles and the more certainly assured of success. And 
the young man, inflamed with a high ambition for 
public honors in any of the great walks of life 
where honors may be won, wisely seeks the aids of 
education for the furtherance of his purposes. And 
perhaps we are justified in presuming that this con- 
sideration, more than any other, serves to replenish 
our institutions with their annual recruits of stu- 
dents, and those, too, of the better class. The pru- 
dent parent or guardian, knowing how^ readily 
** riches make to themselves wings and fly away,** 
and that education is inalienable and enduring, and 
always available, seeks it as the best and surest pro- 
vision for those whose welfare he would promote. 
And the thoughtful young man looking forward to 
active life, and inspired with a laudable ambition 
to turns its opportunities to account, wisely judges 
that his surest way to success is to fit himself for 
life's conflicts by this most promising preparation. 
Nor are these considerations to be condemned in- 
discriminately, but rather are they, in themselves, 
to be applauded, though the final estimate of them 
must depend upon the uses to which the advantages 
of education shall be devoted. If the chief purpose 
is fame — to gain the praise of men — if the attain- 
ment and the maintenance of one's social position 



ITS PURPOSE. 67 

IS the ruling motive, the purpose, though not the 
lowest, is still much below the proper elevation ; and 
while its pursuit is attended with peculiar difficulties, 
its highest possible success is sure to bring disap- 
pointments. This, too, may be inspired by a nar- 
row selfishness ; for the advantages of education 
may be desired not for generous and philanthropic 
uses, but for self-aggrandizement. How far these 
defective sentiments may have operated toward 
crowding these halls with expectant multitudes of 
generous youths we need not inquire too closely. 
If any have so come, it is the business of their in- 
structors to show them a more excellent way. The 
ruling idea in that case is success in the conflicts of 
life, with the possible awards of wealth and honor 
and power among men — a prize altogether unspir- 
itual, and appreciated chiefly by men's lower nature 
— while it lacks adaptation to the souFs higher and 
better aspirations. It is also a preparation for a con- 
flict in which only a very few can succeed ; and with 
them it does not pay. 

Still another not inconsiderable, though still an al- 
together inadequate claim, why education should be 
valued and pursued, and one, too, of which much ac- 
count is often made, is its power to minister to some 
of the higher wants of its subjects. Education, com- 
bining intelligence and culture, adds to one's powers 



68 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

to enjoy, and so increases his internal resources, and 
also provides for their gratification. There is some- 
times a kind of indolent contentment which subsists 
with only the least help from either knowledge or 
culture, but the plane of such a life is a humble 
one, and its pleasures are low and unsatisfactory. 
The poets and idealists tell us of the delights of 
Arcadian simplicity, the guileless pleasures of peas- 
ants and shepherds, whom they transform into 
nymphs and swains ; but all these are simply ideal 
pictures whose models are not found in the real 
world. Wordsworth*s ** Simple Peter," a man, indeed, 
but the least possible removed from the brute, is a 
much more real and truthful image. *' That the 
soul be without knowledge is not good,'* is not only 
a divine revelation but equally a lesson of human 
experience. The mind instinctively craves instruc- 
tion, just as the physical system craves food; and 
if in either case the needed supply is withheld, dis- 
ease and dwarfings and malformations will be the 
result. Education brings to its subjects larger 
capabilities for elevated enjoyments, and so diverts 
the heart's interests from whatever is merely sen- 
suous, and therefore degrading. As weeds spring 
up spontaneously and grow without cultivation, but 
bear no valuable fruit, so the grosser elements of 
human nature develop themselves without being 



ITS PURPOSE, 69 

cultivated, but can give but little real pleasure ; 
while whatever is truly excellent must be planted by 
instruction and cultivated by discipline. The facts 
of society abundantly confirm these things. The 
notion that uneducated peoples, nations, or individ- 
uals are exceptionally pure and innocent is well 
known to be quite the opposite of the real state of 
the case, as may be abundantly proved by obser- 
vation. 

In the absence of culture the lower elements 
vitiate the whole nature. Depravity of character 
and viciousness of life, which necessarily result from 
the lack of education, entail innumerable discom- 
forts; and these, in the case of the uneducated, are 
rendered the less tolerable by the absence of the spir- 
itual resources which invariably accompany mental 
culture. Popular ignorance is never separated from 
social and domestic wretchedness ; and had it no 
higher functions, the promotion of education would 
be sufficiently justified by its beneficent social in- 
fluences. And what is true of communities is still 
more so in respect to individuals, to whom educa- 
tion becomes a constant resource for pleasurable 
living. 

Among the notable advantages of education to 
the individual is the ability that it gives him to 
derive pleasure from all his surroundings. From his 



VO CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TJON. 

cottage on the hill-side the man of cultured sensi- 
bilities derives larger values from Cleon's broad acres 
than are all the stores that they yield to their own- 
er's garners. Leaving out of the account for the 
moment all properly religious considerations, but 
remembering, meanwhile, that they must finally 
determine the case in its completed results, it will 
still appear very clearly that the man of the world, 
the genuine epicurean, must crave for himself the 
benefits of education, in order that he may revel in 
his mental resources and hold high converse with 
his own thoughts, and with other minds, living or 
departed, with whom he may associate. 

To such a one nature becomes a vast gymnasium, 
well stored with the means of giving pleasure, 
while art brings her ministries of painting and 
sculpture, of architecture and landscape gardening, 
and of the melodies and harmonies of song or the 
moving voice of oratory. To him every sense, 
and also the stores of a cultivated memory and 
the beautiful creations of a vivid imagination 
minister the loftiest thoughts upon the noblest 
themes, and all his spiritual resources contribute 
to his pleasure. Evidently, therefore, even in 
respect to only the present world and the things 
that pertain to it, education may claim no incon- 
siderable place, appealing to men's self-love in view 



ITS PURPOSE. 71 

of its ability to contribute to their temporal happi- 
ness. 

But from the higher, the specifically Christian 
point of view, all such estimates of life are not only 
** incomplete," but positively and fatally defective 
in respect to all that is noblest and best in ** living," 
and that, too, as to the things that belong to the 
present world. Only as men live for others do 
they attain to '^ complete living," while the man of 
the world lives only for himself, or, if he seeks com- 
panionships, his ruling motives are still his own 
pleasures. His highest thoughts stop short of the 
realm of the spiritual and ethical, and find their 
sphere, at the very best, in the aesthetical in taste, 
and not the conscience, making pleasure, and not 
duty, supreme. 

Nor need it be denied that in all this there is a 
real joy, and that the character so brought into 
view may possess many admirable qualities ; but its 
defects and positive faults are also very great and 
manifest. Intellect and taste are worthy to be 
praised, but the conscience — the moral element in 
the soul — transcends all else, both in its intrinsic 
w^orth and in its relation to men's happiness. And 
yet it may occur that while the former two may be 
liberally educated and broadly cultured this latter 
may remain uncared for and inadequately developed. 



72 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

And where this is the case there can be neither 
symmetry of character nor ** complete Hving/' 
Every man owes back to society all that he has re- 
ceived from it, according to his ability, and his 
selfish devotion of all that he has to his own pleas- 
ing is a fraud against humanity that will inevitably 
return to vex him. 

These considerations have led some whose souls 
were raised above such cultured epicureanism, but 
not quite up to the Christian standard of entire 
consecration, to include in their inventory of right 
living an ideal and practical philanthropy; the serv- 
ice of the State and humanity. The religious ele- 
ment in man's nature, separated from its supreme 
object, often expresses itself in admirable forms of 
philanthropy and patriotism and in acts of heroic 
and unselfish devotion, which the world is ever ready 
to applaud. An illustration of this is seen in the 
legend of Curtius's throwing himself into the chasm 
in the forum, that so it might be closed, and also in the 
more authentic story of Regulus. We see this in 
the philanthropy of a Girard or Peter Cooper and the 
noble deeds of our *' good Samaritans ; " for, though 
godliness is never developed from man's nature, a 
kind of natural goodness is still possible, and educa- 
tion may evoke this. It displayed itself in the lofty 
ethical system of the Stoics, and it is seen equally 



ITS PURPOSE. 73 

clearly in the delicate and sturdy sense of honor 
sometimes manifested even by savages. But as 
these things result from instincts rather than from 
culture — perhaps often from direct divine inspira- 
tions — and they appear alike in the learned and the 
unlearned, though no doubt culture favors their de- 
velopment, they lie outside of the definite limits 
of our present discussions. 

The glory of man is, that he is not like other 
denizens of our world. In strength, in agility, and 
in beauty, these are his rivals, and often his supe- 
riors ; while over against his reason lie their in- 
stincts, which, if less various in their adaptations, are 
much surer in both their coming and their uses. In 
contrast with his irrational competitors, and in 
respect to simply mundane affairs, there is certainly 
not much reason why the wise man should glory in 
his wisdom, or the strongman in his strength, or the 
rich man in his riches. Man's superiority must be 
recognized as consisting in that by which he is 
contra-distinguished from all other creatures : his 
spiritual nature in its purely religious and its ethical 
intuitions and capabilities. And because of its 
transcendent excellence this element of his charac- 
ter should be especially cared for in his education, 
in respect to both right being and '' complete liv- 
ing.** As, therefore, ** the Christian is the highest 



74 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 

style of man/' not the religious sentimentalist 
merely, nor the trained theologian, who believes, 
but not " with a heart unto righteousness,'' so should 
education in its purposes and methods be directed 
especially to those things through which Christian 
character and Christian living may be infallibly 
secured. How this may be done must be clearly 
apprehended before the work can be entered upon 
with any promise of success, and for that purpose 
right notions of the character to be acted upon 
must be entertained. And here it is found that 
before instruction can do its best work there is need 
of a radical and thorough rectification of the spirit. 
That *^ man is very far gone from original (essential) 
righteousness, and in his own (proper) nature in- 
clined to evil,'' is not primarily a theological dogma, 
nor wholly a truth of revelation. It is a matter of 
fact patent to all observers and confessed by all real 
philosophers of the mind, who concede that in order 
to its needed elevation a regenerating process must 
take place in the character. But by what agency 
this radical transformation of the character is to be 
effected the philosophers do not inform us. The 
ablest of them confess that it is (and from the 
nature of the case must be) a mystery. The ulti- 
mate processes by which character is transformed 
lie deeper to the soul than the farthest reaches of the 



ITS PURPOSE. 75 

consciousness. We know the results, but neither 
the effectuating cause nor the manner of its pro- 
ceeding. It is also philosophically manifest that 
the power that shall fundamentally transform the 
interior nature must originate and operate from a 
source beyond the subject acted upon. To change 
the course of nature requires a force outside of and 
superior to nature. This idea is one with which the 
readers of the New Testament are familiar. The 
divine Teacher spoke of it as a '' being born from 
above," and an apostle amplifies this thought by 
predicating of saved souls a spiritual renewal ; a 
*' being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and 
abideth forever." From the side of philosophy 
comes the response — it is in Coleridge's words — '' I 
utterly disclaim the notion that any human intelli- 
gence, with whatever power it might manifest itself, 
isalone adequate to the office of restoring health to 
the will ;" but he continues to say, in substance, in a 
dependent alliance with the All-perfect and Supreme 
Reason, of course, changing the original basis of 
action, the human will may be effectually harmonized 
with the divine. And here again even our philosoph- 
ical guides bring us back to lessons of sacred wis- 
dom. *' The fear of the Lord " — a devout subjection 
of the human to the divine will — ^* is the beginning," 



76 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

the formative element and condition, *'of wisdom/' 
With this, which by nature we have not and cannot 
obtain, all correct education of the spiritual man 
must begin. 

In the presence of a body of Christian educators 
and students these things may seem to be only 
truisms, which all recognize and accept. Be it so ; 
but their value, and the possibility that they may 
be lost sight of, much more than justifies this refer- 
ence to them. It is not that specifically Christian 
instruction is out of place or entirely unavailing 
before the regeneration of the spiritual nature is 
completed, but that its success in fashioning the 
character requires that process as an attending con- 
dition; and to it also all real Christian teaching tends. 
And only by virtue of the new spirit received in that 
process can the proper ideal of moral excellence of 
character be even approximately realized or the 
conduct be raised to the standard of '' complete 
living.'* But this spiritual regeneration, because of 
its subjective nature and its influence upon the moral 
elements of the soul rather than the intellectual, 
is neither education itself nor the direct agency for 
that work, though it greatly facilitates it as a pre- 
disposing cause. But every thing is still to be 
learned, and the renewed habitudes of the spiritual 
man are to be confirmed and hardened into endur- 



ITS PURPOSE. 77 

ing consistency. Intellectual and spiritual growth 
proceed most symmetrically and successfully, and 
each ministers to the increase of the other while 
proceeding side by side; the head and the heart in 
harmony. 

The notion that has so widely prevailed, that 
there is a necessary antagonism between secular and 
sacred learning, and that there is an incompatibility 
between the scholarly and the Christian characters, 
results from viewing the subject from a wrong stand- 
point. The same God is the maker of both the 
head and heart, and he is '' not the author of con- 
fusion, but of peace;'' of harmony not less among 
the powers of the mind than in the Church. The 
healthy development of the mind requires that with 
the increase of secular knowledge there shall be a like 
growth in the knowledge of things spiritual ; that the 
quickened conscience and enlarged moral susceptibil- 
ities shall be illuminated by the light of the under- 
standing and directed in their outgoings by knowl- 
edge and a sound judgment. God has joined them 
together in order that each may minister to the 
other; and that, growing up together, both may 
realize their highest possibilities. The mind that 
goes forth in the domains of nature searching for the 
truth, if accompanied and possessed by the spirit 
of faith, finds in every thing the demonstration of 



78 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

God, in his person and his works, his creatorship 
and his providence. If the intellect is educated and 
the moral nature dwarfed there will result un- 
belief, and the negation of faith, pride of opinion, 
and inordinate self-consciousness ; and if, on the 
other hand, the religious sentiments are dispropor- 
tionately developed alongside of a barren waste of 
thought, there is always a liability to superstition and 
dangerous fanaticism, to instability and the possibil- 
ity of being led into hurtful and destructive errors. 
'' Complete living " is, therefore, the result of com- 
plete education, both of the head and heart, the 
intellect and the emotions, the understanding, the 
sensibilities and the will, the logical, the sesthetical, 
and the ethical elements of the man, the judg- 
ment, the taste, and the conscience. Let all these 
be equally educated, and each enlarged according to 
its capabilities, and the concordant principles of 
truth, beauty, and goodness wrought into the sub- 
stance and fiber of the character ; then '' complete 
living '* will cease to be a shadowy ideal— to be seen 
dimly in the unapproachable distance — but it will 
have become a realized fact in the souFs spontaneous 
action. And since the correct ordering of the life 
and character is to be effected in opposition to the 
3trong impulses of the lower elements of men's nat- 
ures, with their inborn depravity, the stronger force 



ITS PURPOSE, 79 

of objective authority is needful to overcome these 
and to enthrone the conscience over the renewed will. 
Perception of the right is not alone sufficient to 
insure its observance; beyond and above this must 
be the sense of duty to deter from the wrong and 
to impel to the right the disciplinary force of Chris- 
tian instruction. 

We have yet two subsidiary thoughts to be con- 
sidered before passing from this part of our general 
subject: 

First, That the adaptation of Christianity to 
man's nature emphasizes the utility of specifically 
Christian education. We have attempted to show, 
from the natural constitution of man, that in order to 
his highest culture a prominent place must be given 
to moral and religious instruction and discipline. If 
now we reverse the process, and approach the sub- 
ject from the side of practice and experience, the 
same conclusions are reached and still more directly 
enforced. The domination of the appetites and pas- 
sions is a painful and degrading slavery, and their 
service is both a weariness and a dwarfing of the soul. 
And if, rising above these merely animal desires, 
the dominion is given to '^ the lusts of the eye and 
the pride of life," there will still remain unsatisfied 
longings, and the noblest aspirations of the soul will 
be held in check. Even with the widest learning 



80 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

and the most appreciated culture ** the eye is not 
satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing;" 
the starved and defrauded spiritual nature still reveals 
its presence, and the soul's unrest demands its vin- 
dication. Only as the moral nature is developed by 
education, side by side w^ith the other and less 
spiritual elements of the character, can its better 
possibilities be realized and the harmonious action 
of the powers of the soul secured. 

Our second thought, with which w^e will close, is 
that since education very greatly enhances the capa- 
bilities of its subjects, there is a corresponding 
need that these increased powders should be tem- 
pered and directed by correct moral influences. 
The voice of warning against the perils of *' godless 
schools " is not a false alarm ; the danger is real and 
may be very great. And accordingly the Church 
has, at all times, wisely concerned itself with the 
work of education, not only in respect to specifically 
Christian doctrines and duties, but also in all that 
tends to mental grow^th and the fashioning of men's 
characters. And it should not be forgotten that men- 
tal growth w^ithout a corresponding development of 
the moral nature tends fatally toward spiritual de- 
pravation and enmity against God. It is, then, 
qCiite possible that our schools, ourw^hole system of 
secular education, shall become seminaries of spec- 



ITS PURPOSE. 81 

ulative and practical ungodliness. The Church, 
therefore, acts only in response to an imperative 
requirement in founding and maintaining institu- 
tions for the promotion of sound learning, for the 
needful education of its youth among the salutary 
and hallowing influences of religion, and to give due 
effect to that purpose it devolves upon those who 
are charged w^th these sacred interests the high duty 
of making the teaching specifically and emphatically 
Christian. Surely a Methodist school should be, 
first of all, religious, 
6 



82 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 



IV. 

LIONS IN THE WAY-SPECIAL PERILS AND HOW TO 

TREAT THEM. 

THE author of the Book of Proverbs presents in 
the form of a parable the cowardly and self- 
excusing plea with which '' the slothful man*' seeks 
to excuse his remissness, " There is a Hon without, I 
shall be slain in the streets/' The fact declared might 
be true enough ; but the fault was, that it was used as 
an excuse for cowardly indolence, and not as an in- 
centive to earnest duty. The lesson of the proverb 
is, that though there be difficulties and dangers in 
the path of duty, only '' the slothful '* will for that 
reason hesitate to walk in that way, with the addi- 
tional intimation that only to such are the diffi- 
culties insurmountable or the dangers especially 
formidable. The author of the Pilgrim s Progress 
weaves both the imagery and the lesson of this 
proverb into his narrative, with suitable amplifica- 
tions and embellishments. There were lions, he 
tells us, one on either side of the narrow way ; so 
that in attempting to avoid either there was a 
liability to come too near to the other, and each 
seemed to be waiting for his prey. But in fact they 



LIONS IN THE WA V, 83 

were chained, and at so short a tether that the pil- 
grim could pass safely between them. So, though 
they were real lions, and therefore dangerous, they 
could not harm him so long as he used courage and 
discretion. 

Almost every enterprise has its difficulties, which 
the *' slothful " may readily magnify into lions; and 
in all human affairs failure is a contingent possi- 
bility which must be avoided by wise and brave 
action. In the things connected with Christian 
education there is a full share of these contingencies, 
which the wise and conscientious instructor will 
recognize and duly appreciate. Such is human 
nature, and such are the influences among which 
personal character must be fashioned, that its moral 
elevation requires conflict in the process, so giving 
to its successful accomplishment the character of a 
victory. The natural difficulties of the case, also, 
are greatly intensified in the conditions of young 
persons actively and rapidly increasing in knowledge. 
Some of these, w^hich are inseparable from the con- 
ditions of mental growth and development, we have 
already sufficiently indicated. We have now to 
consider some which belong more specifically to the 
present times and the prevailing conditions of 
thought. The thinking of the age is steadily 
changing its points of observation, and so obtaining 



84 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

new and broader and more correct views of things ; 
and these changed views necessitate new adjust- 
ments of thought respecting some things closely- 
related to the truths of religion. These changes 
cannot be avoided ; we think, too, that they are 
desirable ; but they impose upon the Christian edu- 
cators of our times a sacred and somewhat difficult 
duty. 

During the present century very great advances 
have been made in nearly all departments of human 
learning, of which progress the broader and better 
methods of thinking that have come into use were 
at first a procuring cause, and it was afterward in- 
tensified by them. These advances of learning have 
been made especially in the domains of the natural 
sciences and of biblical criticism ; and in both parts 
they have impinged upon some traditional and 
time-honored opinions concerning religion. Until 
comparatively lately, on account of the lack of sec- 
ular learning among the common people, religious 
teaching, based upon the English Bible, had the 
undisputed right of way, and the methods of using 
the Bible were also, in many things, sadly defective 
in style and form. But all this is now changed ; 
another authority has come into the council, de- 
manding to be heard in the arbitrament of learned 
questions, and accordingly the whole system of 



LIONS IN THE WAY, 85 

religious beliefs must now be adjusted to these 
changed conditions. The Bible is no less an au- 
thority than before ; but another authority has come 
into the court, and the claims of both parties must 
be heard, and harmonized by the needed modifica- 
tions and the just partition and distribution of the 
domains of each. To the Bible must be conceded 
the supreme authority in all things spiritual, and 
those directly relating to men's relations to God and 
to the kingdom of God in the earth and to the 
future state. But in whatever relates to material 
things nature must be allowed to speak through its 
facts, and men must hear. The first principles, the 
elements of physical science, are found in the ma- 
terial world, and its conclusions are to be derived 
from these and not from the Bible, which surely is 
not a text-book of natural philosophy ; nor should 
it be compelled to stand as an authority in geology, 
or physics, or psychology. The processes by which 
natural and spiritual knowledge in their severalty 
are attained are essentially diverse, and each kind 
is independent of the other, and, therefore, each 
should be shut up to its own specialties. The two 
books — nature and revelation — are both of God, and 
they are, therefore, alike infallibly true, and each is 
supreme in its own domain, and because they pro- 
ceed from the one eternal fountain of truth they 



86 CHRIS riAN ED UCA TION, 

cannot contradict each other, though to men's lim- 
ited observations their teaching may sometimes 
seem to be irreconcilable. 

It is also becoming more and more manifest to 
our wisest and most devout Christian thinkers that 
the Bible is largely an undeveloped mine of spiritual 
treasures ; that hitherto the Church and Christian 
thinkers have navigated only the shallows and the 
narrow friths of its boundless ocean of spiritual 
mysteries, which the divine Spirit is appointed to 
make manifest in due time — and this thought 
should teach all men to hesitate before announcing 
as a finality their own partial conceptions as the 
complement of what the Bible teaches. And as to 
men's knowledge of the material world, it is in 
respect to phenomena scarcely more than infinites- 
imal in comparison w^ith what is still unknown ; 
and as to an all-comprehending and combining 
ratiojiale of the material universe, the most learned 
scientists have not yet mastered its alphabet. It is 
therefore quite too soon for the contestants re- 
specting the teachings of revelation and the findings 
of science to make out a definite inventory of their 
distinctive claims. Whatever the Bible clearly de- 
clares, and of that there is very much that is both 
indubitably manifest and unspeakably valuable, we 
gladly accept and appropriate. But just what may 



LIONS IN THE WAY. 87 

be the relations of these spiritual realities to the 
world of matter and of the natural laws among 
which we live may not be entirely manifest. So, 
too, natural phenomena, which fall w^ithin the 
range of the sense-perceptions, must be accepted as 
reliable data of knowledge ; and still further, care- 
fully drawn inferences and rigidly scrutinized gen- 
eralizations must also be accepted for the time 
being, and until further knowledge shall require 
their modification or re-adjustment. But it is the 
temerity of ignorance to set up these half-under- 
stood phenomena and their still more shadowy 
suggestions against the truths of revelation, and, 
also, because our knowledge of the Bible is quite 
the opposite of infallible, they who attempt to in- 
terpret its lessons should not be too dogmatical. 
Some things have certainly been learned from both 
nature and revelation, but very much more remains 
to be learned ; and in these unexplored regions there 
may still lie concealed some of the great factors 
that make up the problem of being. 

For its own purpose — namely, our religious in- 
struction^^the Bible must be accepted as a divinely- 
given embodiment of truth and doctrine, and even 
its references to natural things are subordinate and 
auxiliary to the same purpose. In respect to these 
things its point of view commands the apparent and 



88 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION, 

phenomenal rather than the occult and unknowable 
reality. As a record designed for all ages and con- 
ditions of mental growth no other form would have 
been suitable ; for a revelation, that it may come 
within the sphere of men's knowledge and so 
become a manifestation of the truth, must appear 
in the setting of their conceptions. And yet those 
materialistic conceptions are not an integral part of 
the truth which they invest. To those to whom the 
words of revelation were first given, the earth ap- 
peared to be a flat surface, walled in by the horizon 
and canopied by the sky ; and the truths of God 
delivered to men with such conceptions necessarily 
entered into the same conditions. And when the 
ideas of other worlds came to men's minds these 
were assigned positions indicated by their character, 
above and beneath. All this was manifestly the 
result of the mental preconceptions of those to 
whom the revelation was made, and they indicate 
not the real but the phenomenal world. 

The practical problems thus propounded are not 
peculiar to this age, and the best minds of Christen- 
dom have all along so understood the language and 
imagery of the Bible ; and as required to do so, by 
the growth of physical science, they have made 
haste to modify their conceptions of the sense of 
the text agreeably to the better knowledge of the 



LIONS IN THE WA V. 89 

material things of which it incidentally treats. But 
the rulers of the Church have not always been 
equally wise, as was seen in the case of Galileo; and 
our own time has produced its full share of the 
same kind of folly. It was certainly wise to inter- 
pret the language and imagery of the Bible just as 
they appear till it became manifest that such a 
course must involve absurdities ; for old and pre- 
scriptive notions should not be lightly abandoned. 
A plea in mitigation may therefore be offered in 
favor of those who opposed the Copernican system 
as a dangerous heresy ; and the same consideration 
should be extended to the many good people who 
in our day are alarmed at the teachings of the 
natural sciences. So while we respect their cautious- 
ness, and excuse their ignorance, we cannot be 
expected out of respect for them to deny manifest 
truth. This unreadiness of those who are not ex- 
perts in science to accept the vaticinations of the 
professed prophets of nature, is also somewhat 
justified by the overweening pretentiousness of not 
a few smatterers in science, who have attempted to 
build up great theories on very narrow bases and 
with scant materials, and also doing this in a spirit 
of intense and unreasonable opposition to the truth 
of the Bible. 

If we are really believers in the truths of Chris- 



90 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 

tianity, assui^edly for us there is nothing to fear in 
respect to the stability and perpetuity of the great 
system of spiritual truth of which the Bible is the 
embodiment and depository ; and they do but little 
honor to the faith which they would cherish and 
protect, who are alarmed at every threat against it 
and dread to see it submitted to the severest tests. 
The aphorism uttered by Macaulay respecting the 
using of the Baconian philosophy, that it calls for 
much hope and very little faith, is especially needed 
to guide our modern scientists : the former to 
quicken their researches, and the latter to save them 
from the characteristic folly of their class, of shout- 
ing Eureka before any demonstration has been 
reached. The great truths of religion are much 
more than merely traditions ; for they have demon- 
strated their vitality and power through the ages ; 
and they are therefore not to be lightly set aside, 
and especially not in obedience to the requirements 
of systems that seem to be as unsteady and evan- 
escent as the shifting lights of the aurora borealis. 
And yet it would indicate a combination of fanati- 
cism and stupidity to refuse to accept the well- 
established results of science for fear that the faith 
would suffer loss. Christianity is not a house built 
on the sand, and needing to be guarded by ecclesias- 
tical canons and fortified by ignorance ; but it is 



LIONS IN THE WA V. 91 

built upon the Rock, and stands secure. No truth 
has any thing to fear as to the outcome of any fairly- 
conducted examination of its evidences; and the 
mistaking friends of the Gospel who deprecate such 
discussions do it a disservice. And yet, because 
the unlearned and unskillful are liable to be moved 
from their steadfastness by superficial and specious 
arguments, it is needful that they shall be protected 
by their teachers with better instructions. This is 
the sacred and the delicate duty of the Christian 
instructor— to lead his pupils to better conceptions 
of the truths as they rise out of their childhood's 
unreasoning faith into broader and clearer percep- 
tions. And just along this path are the " lions " at 
which the faint-hearted are alarmed, and which 
without proper guidance may prove fatally de- 
structive. But, like those of the Pilgriin s Progress, 
these lions are harmless if dealt with boldly and 
circumspectly. To deny or ignore all these occa- 
sions of harm would be to act like the proverbial os- 
trich, that when pursued hides her head in the sand 
and fancies there is no danger because none is seen. 
There are indeed dangers that may not be dis- 
regarded in the things of which we have spoken ; 
dangers that should be recognized and confronted 
boldly and wisely ; and if so dealt with they will 
prove to be as harmless as the chained lions. But 



92 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

to attempt to evade the conflict is to insure 
defeat. 

The questions arising out of the learning of the 
times and affecting the evidences of Christianity 
are of two kinds : those that relate to the natural 
sciences, especially geology and biology, and those 
that are developed by biblical criticism. And these 
are practically the more formidable on account of 
the spirit of skepticism that pervades and animates 
much of the learned criticism of the age, and the 
illogical audacity with which conclusions are pro- 
claimed before the conflict of arguments has been 
fairly joined. It may be conceded that the results 
of scientific investigation and of critical inquiry have 
very considerably changed the external aspects of 
the conflict for and against the Christian faith. 
New questions have been raised, which, unanswered, 
would soon become fatal objections ; and these are 
known not only to every scholar, but effectively to 
every one, old and young, learned and unlearned. 
Our church schools teach the sciences that are being 
used as engines for the overthrow of the faith ; and 
whoever studies the Bible in our Sunday-schools is 
reminded that the genuineness and the integrity of 
nearly all the sacred book have been called in ques- 
tion. These are the issues that are forced upon all 
Christian teachers, whether in the pulpit or in the 



LIONS IN THE WA V, 93 

professor's chair ; and to the latter pre-eminently 
belongs the duty of engaging in the strife, which is 
perilous only as it is neglected. Let us then, as we 
proceed, consider these several subjects as they seem 
to relate to the things that are taught us out of the 
Bible. 

Geology, the science of the earth viewed as dead 
matter, is, as a science, scarcely a hundred years old, 
though both the sacred and the profane literature 
of all ages contain geological facts and references. 
As a science it is also still in its infancy, with but 
few of its problems fully resolved, and of the thou- 
sands of questions suggested by its ascertained 
facts only the smallest part have been satisfactorily 
answered. Still some things have been clearly made 
out, and some important principles have been de- 
termined, which only the folly of ignorance will 
attempt to belittle. And some of these have pretty 
close and effective relations to certain things found 
in the Bible, which have also been wrought into 
theology and become integral parts of the popular 
faith ; and to adjust these things satisfactorily, and 
to harmonize the two sets of truth, demands close 
and intelligent consideration. And it may also be 
said they have compelled the adoption of modified 
views of some things in the Old Testament history 
and of biblical interpretation generally. 



94 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

One of the early battles of geological science 
against the traditional interpretation of the Bible 
was over the six days of creation as found in the 
beginning of Genesis ; and this has resulted, it must 
be confessed, in the thorough defeat of the tradi- 
tional method. We have ceased to hold and teach 
on this subject as we did fifty years ago, when our 
best biblical scholars insisted that the only possi- 
ble meaning of the '' six days *' was six periods 
of twenty-four hours each, with their dawns and 
twilights ; while to-day no scholar will so declare. 
And yet this wide change has not harmed our con- 
fidence in the Bible. That patent fact is assuring 
in respect to some other things not yet so clearly 
concluded, involving, among other subjects, impor- 
tant questions relative to the Old Testament Chris- 
tology, and to the place of man in the creation ; all 
of which questions will no doubt find satisfactory 
solutions as they arise and are duly examined. The 
now generally accepted notion of the indefinite 
extent of the period designated '* six days,** during 
which our earth was passing from chaos into a state 
adapted to -human habitation, sweeps away a multi- 
tude of otherwise very formidable difficulties, and 
especially so some of those connected with the 
scientifically-attested fact that man is evidently the 
latest found of the earth*s denizens. While allow- 



LIONS IN THE WA Y. 95 

ing any required length of time for the pre-Adamite 
earth, the testimony of the rocks and of the gravel- 
beds, the caves and the estuaries, calls for no greater 
age for the human race than is easily reconcilable 
with the allowably rectified chronology of the 
Bible. The whole difficulty that has seemed to 
arise from the evident antiquity of the earth is thus 
at once and effectually disposed of, for in the 
chronicles of the ages of the Almighty millions 
of millenniums cost no more than single years. 
Through these apparent mazes and over these 
necessary transitions of views and opinions our 
Christian instructors are called to conduct their 
pupils, and to demonstrate to them the essential 
harmony of all that is really known of science and 
revelation. 

The study of biology, with its related matters, 
opens a wide field for inquiry, which is as yet only 
very partially explored, though here too some highly 
important facts and principles have been definitely 
settled. We are here also brought into contact with 
not a few important questions that are more or less 
closely related to biblical and theological subjects ; 
and they, therefore, call for intelligent and judicious 
treatment by our Christian educators. In this ex- 
amination Nature appears as an independent witness 
to give her testimony upon subjects in respect to 



96 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

which the Bible has also spoken. These witnesses are 
independent, each of the other, and both are alike 
credible, for neither of them can be untrue ; nor is it 
allowable to suspect that they can contradict each 
the other. In considering these things it is, first of 
all, necessary to ascertain just what the Bible declares 
about them, and also to carefully consider what has 
been clearly proved respecting the phenomena of 
living things. The first result of this process would 
be a not inconsiderable abatement of pretensions on 
both sides in respect to the extent of our knowledge 
and the infallible correctness of the conclusions that 
have seemed to be reached ; and the next result 
would be, that since these things are viewed from 
diverse points of observation by these two witnesses, 
it may be reasonably inferred that what may seem 
to be contradictory is so only in appearance, and 
that fuller knowledge would disclose the most com- 
plete harmony. 

It is quite possible — may we not say it is very 
certain ? — that in matters relating to natural science 
more has been inferred from the language of the Bible 
than can be legitimately justified ; and it is unques- 
tionable that many things announced by the scien- 
tists with all the apparent authority of oracles, are 
often simply hypotheses, or at best only theories, in 
the construction of which a very large part of the 



LIONS IN THE WA V. 97 

materials have been contributed by the imagination 
rather than gathered from well-ascertained facts. To 
place these things in their true relations is a delicate 
and a needed work, demanding alike spiritual illum- 
ination, large acquaintance with the phenomena of 
nature, and thoroughly rational modes of thinking. 
But until this whole subject has been subjected to 
the treatment which can only thus be given to it, it 
is too soon to assume that there is, or can be, any 
conflict between science and revelation. 

A hasty reference to some of the undisputed facts 
of the physical world may help to a better under- 
standing of this subject. The things of the whole 
world appear under four different forms: 

1. Inorganic matter. 

2. Vegetable life. 

3. Animal life. 

4. Rational life. 

All these the materialistic scientists tell us are 
only different conditions and aspects of matter, and 
that they shade into each other without any ascer- 
tained or probable lines of demarkation between 
them. It is assumed that what is sometimes called 
dead matter has in itself the elementary principles of 
all life, the '' potency and prophecy of all phenom- 
ena," which are sure to be developed in organic 
forms, wherever the conditions are favorable. This 



98 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

is the much-talked-of theory of evolution, respect- 
ing which very much has been said and written, and 
with about equal unwisdom on both sides. But 
the thoughtful scholar, whether a Christian or a 
skeptic, while he confesses on the one hand that 
there are facts in nature that may be readily built 
into such a theory, yet, on the other hand, he must 
concede that the phenomena of nature are not, as 
a whole, in harmony with its requirements. The 
real philosopher will, therefore, suspend his judg- 
ment- and ask for more light, and the Christian 
believer, with his '' more sure word of prophecy,'* 
will abide in his faith and await, without fear or 
misgivings, all that science may disclose. 

The several forms of existence which are seen to 
stand distinct in their phenomenal aspects, have 
never been proved to be otherwise than essentially di- 
verse, and incapable of transmutation, under the last 
analysis to which they have been submitted. Theo- 
rists miay talk about the unity of nature and the 
upward gradation of being, without a break or 
chasm from the lowest to the highest, from the dull 
clod to the ethereal spirit, but the empiricist has no 
testimony by which to sustain such a fancy. The 
chasm between inorganic matter and living organisms 
has never been bridged, although learned and expert 
physicists have examined nature ** with tortures,*' in 



LIONS IN THE IVA V. 99 

order, if possible, to extort that secret ; but in no 
case has life been evolved by any of the processes of 
chemistry, and while there is absolutely no direct 
proof that life has been evolved from what seems 
to be dead matter, the negative proof is complete 
and overwhelming that it cannot be done, since as 
to the facts of nature, organic life, in every known 
case and among all conditions of being, is seen to be 
the result and offspring of pre-existing living organ- 
isms. So, too, the two forms of living things — 
vegetables and animals — though apparently scarcely 
distinct in some of their lowest forms are found on 
closer inspection, to differ essentially in their char- 
acters, and therefore to be incapable of transition 
the one into the other. Vegetation, in its merest 
approach toward its ideal perfection, is apparently 
further removed from animal life than in its lower 
and less developed forms; and at every point nature 
seems to declare that the chasm between its two 
forms of life is absolutely impassable. 

In man is seen still another form of life — the 
spiritual — which cannot be identified with his ani- 
mal and physical nature ; for there is an absolute 
want of proof that the rational soul is the product of 
man's physical being, or that the physical instincts 
lie in the same plane with the reason. And so we 
find these several forms of existence, each with its 



100 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

proper differentia, and with its metes and bounds 
clearly established, and which cannot be over-passed. 
And while we may not accept the Bible as a 
competent authority in the science of biology, we 
cannot but recognize the remarkable agreement of 
the story of the creation of the earth, and the 
herb, and the living thing, and finally of man, with 
the arrangement and distribution of things in the 
world. 

The theory of evolution, much talked of and but 
little understood, is, so far as it has any scientific 
basis, shut up to the various forms of vegetable and 
animal life. It certainly cannot be applied to in- 
organic matter, which is without growth, and it 
has never been shown to apply to spiritual beings. 
Growth is a universal fact throughout the domains 
of vegetable and animal life, not only as each indi- 
vidual thing advances from its earliest infantile 
status to its completion, but also that among favor- 
able conditions the offspring rises to a higher stage 
of perfection than was reached by the parent. There 
seems to be for each class and kind of living things, 
an ideal perfection toward which the whole species 
is tending by the force of its vital instincts, and to- 
w^ard which each individual advances through its 
proper stage unless restrained by unpropitious en- 
vironments. And because of the modifying power 



LIONS IN THE IVA V. 101 

of conditions and environments, acting unequally in 
different directions, two individuals of the same 
kind may grow out into widely different forms and 
types ; and if to these different types shall be given 
the name of species, then we have before us the 
process by which specific differences are originated, 
which may at length become fixed and transmis- 
sible by inheritance. 

The question of the evolution of species is, by 
its conditions, incapable of either proof or disproof. 
All living forms are propagated and perpetuated 
agreeably to the original law of like producing like ; 
and yet even that law is found to be somewhat 
variable, and the lines of descent are often seen to be 
divergent ; but whether or not such divergencies are 
shut up within definite limitations, with ever active 
tendencies to return to the original types, cannot 
be determined, for two sufficient reasons: (i) We 
have no sufficient knowledge as to the original con- 
stitution of species, if such there are, and (2) human 
life, and that of the race, is too short and human 
observations too narrow to allow any adequate tests 
by experiments. On the one hand, nature frequently 
manifests a tendency toward the production of 
variations, which at length become fixed and sub- 
ject to the laws of heredity ; but, on the other hand, 
there is no fairly attested case of the production of 



103 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION, 

a well-defined and clearly differentiated species of 
either plants or animals. Evolutionists account for 
this lack of proof by claiming that the time required 
for effectuating such changes exceeds all human 
calculations, and that during such unmeasured cycles 
the earth has existed as a seat of life. But the his- 
tory of those remote ages is written, though very 
imperfectly, in the form of organic remains in the 
earth's frame-work of rocks ; and that record fails to 
sustain the theory that the course of life has been 
steadily and uniformly upward. At the utmost the 
question is still an open one. 

This question of evolution has been discussed with 
an earnestness that seemed to claim, on the one 
hand, and to concede, on the other, that its triumph 
would be fatal to the Christian faith. But just why 
any Christian theist should be afraid of it is not 
altogether obvious. The fact that there is method 
in the processes of nature, and that the tendency 
is upward, ought not to disprove its divine origin nor 
exclude the Creator from his own handiwork. We 
know life simply as a mode of existence and a well- 
directed potency of nature ; and yet assuredly it is 
not itself a property of matter. And since it is 
not known what life is, nor whence it is derived, its 
existence suggests that it comes from an unknown 
and incomprehensible Power, which, because of the 



LIONS IN THE WA V, 103 

attributes revealed in his works, must possess the 
nature of a person. The created universe has been 
recognized as reveaUng its great Original, and the 
skill manifested in its ordering has been accepted as 
proof of the divine wisdom ; and surely the laws of 
life are no less wonderful and theistical than are 
those of the mechanical forces. To detect God in 
his works, and to demonstrate from them his attri- 
butes of power and wisdom and fatherly goodness, 
has been the recognized business of natural theol- 
ogy ; and surely God is not excluded from his works 
because they are perpetually in action, moving in 
changeless order toward the perfection of their pos- 
sibilities. As his providence is seen in the develop- 
ment of God's purposes in society, so are his wis- 
dom and power displayed in the forces of life in the 
world. 

We have purposely assumed the truth and the 
authority of the Bible in all that has been said, and 
such will be the case in all that shall follow ; for this 
is not the place to open that question. But certain 
questions respecting the Bible itself, what it is and 
how it is to be used, are coming to the front and 
demanding to be answered. Our young people and 
the unlearned are aware that modern scholarship 
has brought into question certain traditional notions 
respecting the Scriptures — questions that sometimes 



104 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

seem to involve the first principles of the faith ; and 
to these our Christian educators must render satis- 
factory solutions. We have thought of the Bible 
as one — a unified embodiment of divine truth — and 
such no doubt it is,; and yet it is a compilation of 
documents, and that fact involves the question of 
the canon. The Bible was originally written in lan- 
guages now dead, and even the copies that are now 
in existence are not the originals, but transcripts 
made in later times. It is called the *'word of 
God," and yet it is mournfully human in its compo- 
sition and as to its external character. It is claimed 
and conceded to be inspired ; but just what is the 
substance and purport of that claim is itself a sub- 
ject to be considered. The task imposed by these 
things upon our Christian educators is all-impor- 
tant, and is in itself beset with not inconsiderable 
difficulties; and these are just now not a little 
heightened by the recent and current discussions of 
these subjects. A lion of rather formidable propor- 
tions is here to be confronted. 

We claim for every man the free use of the Bible 
with the right of private interpretation, and that 
concession carries wnth it to the receiver the obli- 
gation to read and understand the written word, 
with the resultant responsibilities. If, in the past, 
these claims have been only partially asserted, and 



LIONS IN THE WA V. 105 

the people have accepted their theology with un- 
questioning confidence from their teachers, it is 
quite evident that we are entering upon a new order 
of things, and that the intelligent but non-profes- 
sional Christians of the future will demand intellid- 
ble answers to all the questions respecting the Bible. 
A very heavy duty is thus devolved upon the Chris- 
tian educators of these times. More intelligent 
conceptions respecting the authority of the Chris- 
tian Scriptures as sacred writings, and of the 
quality of their contents, have become a necessary 
condition for the maintenance of the faith among 
us ; and while the duty resulting from this require- 
ment comes to all who teach, from the nursery to 
the pulpit and the professor's chair, to the last, 
beyond all others, is given the needed facilities for 
dealing with these questions. The unbelief of the 
age is concentrating its forces against the citadel of 
the faith, God's written word ; and they to whom 
belongs the duty of defending the faith must meet 
their antagonists at that point. Many of the older 
methods of defense are no longer available, the 
the enemy having carried some of the outposts that 
lay beyond the walls of the citadel. Some things 
that have been supposed to belong to the integ- 
rity of the faith must probably be abandoned as 
untenable. The ^* hay, wood, and stubble" which 



106 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 

human infirmity has wrought into the structure of 
the traditional theology will perish in the fire of 
the conflict, but the '' gold and silver '' of spiritual 
religion, and the *^ prepared stones '' of Christian 
evidences, will abide in more clearly manifested 
beauty and strength. Here is a call for heroic 
treatment ; here, perhaps, is some heavy work to be 
done, which requires large measures of both force 
and skill. And to whom is this call more directly 
and authoritatively addressed than to those whom 
the authorities of the Church have placed at the 
fountain-heads of instruction — whose business is 
**to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man 
knowledge and discretion? *' No doubt, in view of 
these things, ^* the slothful man *' will say, '* There is 
a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets ;'* but 
because of the greatness of the peril the demand 
for courage and fortitude in those charged with the 
defense of the truth is correspondingly imperative. 
The final result is not at all doubtful ; about that we 
have no misgivings ; our concern is, that it may be 
achieved the most speedily and effectively, and with 
the least possible loss of souls ; and that it may be 
so done our Christian instructors must take hold of 
this matter boldly, ably, wisely, and in the fear of 
God, assured of the sufficiency of the Gospel against 
all its adversaries. 



CHARACTER-MAKING. - 107 



V. 

CHARACTER-MAKING. 

IN another lecture we accepted the statement that 
^' the function of education '* is to prepare its 
subjects for "complete Hving.'* We shall not now 
either withdraw or modify that concession, but we 
would lay alongside of it another thought which 
will help to the better understanding of the things 
to be considered. The phrase " complete living '* 
is evidently intended to be understood in an active 
sense, relative to doing rather than simply being ; 
to conduct rather than character. And yet it is 
evident that the former is dependent upon the latter 
for its stability and effectiveness, and therefore to 
insure " complete living,** attention must be given 
to the formation of " right character.*' Every man's 
life, as a whole, corresponds to his character ; for 
though special resolves and temporary impulses may 
have their uses and may, indeed, be necessary, be 
requisites to the reformation of one's manner of life 
or the improvement of his character, yet in order 
that these shall be permanently effective of good 
results they must pass from the nature of simple 



108 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

impulses and voluntary purposes and become fixed 
and abiding habits. 

The scriptural maxim, " Of the abundance of the 
heart the mouth speaketh," applies equally to all 
the forms of men's activities, and that fact justifies 
the further rule of judgment that '' the tree is known 
by its fruit," and, therefore, that in order that the 
fruit shall be good the tree itself must be good. 
'' Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this- 
tles?" Everyman's active life is a truthful index 
of the ruling qualities of his mind and heart, the 
things that constitute his character. The purpose 
of education is, therefore, to awaken and confirm 
in the soul, so as to constitute its habits, correct 
and noble thoughts and principles ; and wherever 
these are found, and not elsewhere, there will surely 
result *' complete living." The purpose of the pres- 
ent lecture shall, therefore, be to indicate some of 
the conditions and characteristics that are found in 
all those in whom the good work of education has 
been perfected. 

But before proceeding to consider the furniture 
and endowments of such minds it may be useful 
to notice certain needful mental habitudes and 
modes of thought. Intellectual and moral sincerity 
is at once a very rare quality of mind, and also a con- 
dition essential to either right conduct or a correct 



CHARA C TER-MAKING. 109 

character. Prejudices are proverbially unjust, and 
from them their subject himself is usually the 
greatest sufferer, since they render him incapable 
of being just in his opinions and sentiments, and, of 
course, in his conduct also. The effect of such a 
distortion and disarrangement of the mind is to 
disturb the processes of reasoning, to obscure the 
intellectual perceptions, and to darken and pervert 
the conscience, which almost necessarily involves 
personal demoralization, and habitually evil ways of 
thinking and feeling. And because this perverted 
condition of the soul is very deeply inwrought in 
human nature as well as very evil in its effects, it 
calls for the most earnest and also the most delicate 
and judicious efforts for its complete correction — a 
task that is second in interest to scarcely any other. 
Nearly related to men's prejudices, though essen- 
tially not the same, is the peculiar disposition of the 
mind — both the intellect and the moral nature — 
called skepticism. It is the fashion of the times to 
speak very tolerantly, and indeed deferentially, of 
what men choose to designate ** honest doubt," with 
the implication that usually doubts, especially in re- 
spect to matters of religious faith, are honest. Noth- 
ing, however, is more certain than that men's dis- 
beliefs, even more than their beliefs, are formed and 
entertained quite irrespective of any rational proofs. 



110 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

To believe without due evidence is to accept a con- 
dition of mental slavery, which leads to superstition 
and the debasement of the character; and on the other 
hand, to refuse to believe when the proof is at hand 
is not only logically unjust but unphilosophical, and 
opposed to correct and symmetrical mental develop- 
ment ; and when inspired by dislike of the truth it 
is morally corrupting. Superstition is a misdirec- 
tion, and often an abuse of the religious element in 
the human character, but it still continues its sub- 
ject in his character and relations as a religious 
being, so perpetuating in him, even if somewhat 
dwarfed, the noblest attributes of his humanity. 
Skepticism, on the other hand, in addition to its 
utter unreasonableness, is thoroughly destructive of 
all by which the soul becomes allied to moral excel- 
lence. It hides, God and the spirit-w^orld from the 
soul, takes away all faith in the future life, with its 
awards and compensations, and effectually extin- 
guishes hope, except in blind chances and among 
the happenings of the present life. It reduces vir- 
tue to a childish sentiment or else a romantic ideal, 
without any corresponding reality, and renders mo- 
rality only a conventionalism without authority, the 
sport of every one's passions, with only the faintest 
security for any real excellence of life or character. 
Men's actions are, in most cases, determined by 



CHA RA C TER-MAKING. Ill 

their characters, and not by the direct influences of 
either their sense of duty or of interest. They act 
as they feel themselves impelled by their tastes, in- 
clinations, and habits, and each day's conduct is the 
result of the present ruling element of their char- 
acters. But when a spirit of doubt, of unpurposed 
but effective unbelief which excludes God and his 
providence, dominates and fashions all these, the 
character becomes depleted of moral sensibilities, 
and the conscience is deprived of its ability to dis- 
criminate among moral qualities, and of course it 
is without authority ; passion usurps the place of 
the sense of right and the present pleasure, and lust 
or ambition becomes the rule of life. Perhaps the 
man did not deliberately choose his evil ways, but 
by becoming separated from the needful aids that 
come only through the religious instincts, which 
skepticism discredits and destroys, he was left to 
become the sport and subject of the lower elements 
of his nature. Here, then, is work for the Christian 
educators : to see to it that the subjects of their in- 
structions may be saved from the pernicious pov^^er 
of a soul-destroying skepticism by the shaping of 
their characters to better modes of thinking and 
believing. The curse denounced upon those that 
'* remove the ancient landmarks," who ^^ call good 
evil and evil good," who '' put light for darkness 



113 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

and darkness for light," subverting the eternal dis- 
tinctions of right and wrong, and poisoning the 
streams of virtue at their fountains, falls not only 
upon the purposing seducers from virtue, but also 
upon all whose unconscious spiritual influences lead 
away from the truth. Here should the Christian 
educator stand, like Phineas with his censor, to 
stay the plague. 

After these preliminary suggestions in regard to 
certain evils to be carefully avoided we pass to the 
more definite consideration of some things that 
belong to the character of the properly-educated 
Christian. Here we assign the first place, the con- 
victions that possess the mind, because they lie at 
the foundation of character ; for it is evidently true, 
both as to the result of the past and the sure pre- 
sage of the future, that *' as a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he/* Though in our speculations we 
discriminate between the intellectual and the moral 
faculties, they nevertheless belong to the same un- 
divided mind, and mutually and very largely affect 
each the other. A man's beliefs enter into his moral 
and spiritual conditions, and these in turn react 
effectively upon his convictions. He that would 
diligently ''keep his heart," because ''out of it are 
the issues of life,'* must also guard against evil 
thoughts lest the whole mind be led astray by 



CHARACTER-MAKING. 113 

them. Here may be seen both the large possibil- 
ities and the great importance of education, the 
** instruction " of the wise man whose ** reproofs 
are the way of life," the wisdom which is ** an 
ornament of grace " and '' a crown of glory." In 
considering the purposes for which education is to 
be sought for it is well, therefore, to fix our minds 
and thoughts upon the convictions, the habitual 
modes of viewing things, that should be originated 
and entertained, since they necessarily become the 
law of the life. 

We are, of course, speaking especially, though 
not exclusively, of convictions that relate to moral 
and religious truth ; for these are especially and yet 
not exclusively concerned in Christian education. 
It is, then, first of all and in the highest degree im- 
portant that clear and definite notions of right and 
wrong shall be wrought into the understanding and 
made to possess the whole soul ; since the authority 
of the conscience is conditioned by the clearness of 
its discriminations, and its perceptive powers are 
also enlarged by its activities. These things are suf- 
ficiently obvious to all who will observe them ; but 
by being disregarded they become obscured so as to 
escape attention, just as every-where the senses and 
the mind's perceptions detect only the things to 

which they are especially directed, and objects are 
8 



1 14 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TIGN. 

seen or not seen according to the dispositions and 
purposes of those present with them. 

It is not our purpose to speak of the practical 
processes of education, by which the soul's faculties 
are to be adapted to their appropriate functions, 
but rather to consider accomplished results: the fix- 
ing in the mind and heart the convictions that these 
things are abiding realities, that the discriminations 
made by the quickened conscience are just and 
true, sacred and all-important entities, never to be 
left out of the account, but always to be accepted 
as constant factors in all the problems of life. There 
is an infinity of properties and relations in and 
among the things with which v/e have to do, 
some of which seem to elude our observation, and 
others are of not enough value to compensate our 
inquiries. But it is not so with things now under 
notice, for the one thing that is valuable and im- 
portant beyond all else in our mental furniture is 
the power to discriminate between the right and the 
wrong; to recognize the authority of the conscience 
and to realize the obligation to do right ; and that 
the highest possible advantages of these things 
may be at once fruitful and abiding they must be 
wrought into the substance and fiber of the soul's 
being. 

The mind*s conception of moral qualities and 



CHARACTER-MAKING. 115 

their distinctions implies a sphere of thought and 
life other than that of the senses and the natural 
perceptions. The subjective consciousness of moral 
entities implies an objective sphere of being in 
which those things subsist as substantive realities. 
The properties of which the conscience approves as 
excellent are not always identical with those that 
command the approval of the taste. Their rec- 
titude is different in kind from the correctness of 
material measurements, and besides and above all 
merely natural notions of rightness or beauty is 
its mandatory power, which enjoins duty and will 
not be denied, and to which the conscience assents 
and confesses the righteousness of the indicated 
demand. The moral philosophy that fails to recog- 
nize any thing beyond the realm of nature is essen- 
tially defective, because it leaves out of the account 
a present and supreme element of the matter in 
hand. The form of goodness with which man*s 
spiritual nature is chiefly concerned is not a spon- 
taneous production of the mind, but it supposes a 
higher source, and a transcendent authority, oppo- 
sition to which is more than an error ; it is sin, whose 
turpitude is proportioned to the sacredness of the 
Person against whom it offends. These conceptions 
of essential righteousness, of duty, and of the au- 
thority that gives force to the dictates of conscience, 



116 CHRIS riAN ED UCA TION. 

must be so wrought into the mind and embedded 
in the spiritual consciousness so deeply that they 
shall become abiding and ruling elements of charac- 
ter. And where these things so abide and dominate 
the active powers of the soul the conduct of the 
life will correspond with their excellence, and not 
otherwise. 

With these conceptions is also and inseparably 
associated that of retribution, of compensations, in 
the form of honors and well-being to the good and 
of shame and sorrow to the bad. The natural con- 
science, even when only partially instructed, appears 
to have an intuitive sense of something of this sort 
in the ordering of the world's affairs — the idea of a 
Nemesis pursuing the evil-doer, which, though ap- 
parently eluded for a while, is sure at length to 
overtake the guilty one. We see this in the case 
when the barbarians, seeing the viper fastening him- 
self on Paul's hand, concluded that evidently he 
was a murderer, *^ whom, though he hath escaped 
the sea, vengeance suffereth not to live." The illus- 
trations of this intuition, though most commonly 
recognized in the form of vengeance, because the 
sense of guilt is nearly always present to the natural 
conscience, include also many and strongly-marked 
cases of the opposite character. The heart's in- 
tuitions and the experience of mankind unite to 



CHARACTER'MAKING. 117 

respond to the teaching of divine truth, that, 
*' Though a sinner do evil a hundred times and 
his days be prolonged, yet surely it shall be well 
with them that fear God, which fear before him. 
But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither 
shall he prolong his days which are as a shadow; 
because he feareth not before God/' But there is 
a broad difference between the heathen and the 
Christian conception of this subject. The Greek 
tragedy left its Prometheus to suffer the inflictions 
of the tyrant's power without compensation or 
redress ; but the Hebrew drama, though it sets 
forth the sufferings of its hero, tells also of his 
release and his abundant compensations, illustrating 
" the end of the Lord," and proving that he is '* very 
pitiful and of tender mercy.'* Upon the undefined 
and instinctive utterances of the great heart of hu- 
manity oppressed with the sense of sin the Script- 
ures pour a strong and steady light, clearly detecting 
and distinguishing the right from the wTong, and 
assuring to each its appropriate recompense, the 
whole combining in the unchangeable declaration, 
^* There is judgment with the Most High.'' This all- 
pervading and fearfully sacred element of the divine 
government, which is the manifestation of God's 
essential nature, is much more than a fact or an 
established order ; it is rather the outcome of eter- 



118 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

nal righteousness abiding in the Godhead, an essen- 
tial attribute of his divinity manifested in human 
character and impressing itself on all that pertains 
to man's destiny. And because it is of God it 
not only is and must be, but, which is much more, 
the natural conscience feels that it ought so to be. 

There are also the elements of imperishability in 
all the ethical and spiritual exercises and conditions 
of man's nature, by virtue of which the whole char- 
acter is fashioned and the unchanging destiny deter- 
mined. This tremendous truth, so incomparably 
important, so divinely sacred, and so far-reaching 
and abiding in its results, should be deeply embed- 
ded in the convictions and ruling sentiments of the 
mind and heart. The education which fails at this 
point, whatever else it may accomplish, and by 
whomsoever it may be given, is not in the true and 
best sense Christian education. 

Christianity, if not an empty and pretentious 
system of fables, is specifically and eminently a 
supernatural religion, and, in order to its practical 
effectiveness, its supernaturalism must be always 
and every-where recognized. The reality of that 
other and greater realm lying beyond that of sense 
and reason must not only be accepted as a fact 
(conceded, but not much used in our learned in- 
quiries and discussions), but it must also stand 



CHARA C TER-MAKING, 1 1 9 

forth as the one controlling factor in all of them. 
The sphere of nature, to which science is shut up, 
is vastly less than is that of the soul's activities; 
and when science can proceed no further faith may 
properly supplement its shortcomings by supply- 
ing, as trustworthy data, what science hopelessly 
calls for and yet confesses to be a felt want. Science 
finds the world ready-made to its hand, but can 
give no account of its genesis; while, on the other 
hand, '' by faith we understand that the worlds 
were framed by the word of God." The very firbt 
sentence of the Bible reveals what science could 
never have demonstrated, and against which it has 
nothing to offer. The conception of the super- 
natural standing over and above nature, embracing 
and permeating it, brings all the phenomena of the 
natural world out of the chaotic darkness and con- 
fusion of atheism and places them in the light and 
harmony of a divine order. The one great truth of 
science, infinitely greater than any other because it 
is the foundation of all, is God ; and this belongs to 
science only as a postulate, w^hich can neither be 
proved nor rationally called in question. Philosophy 
demands God in all the infinitude and almightiness 
of his attri*butes; the deepest intuitions of the soul 
recognize his being and the instincts feel after him 
as '' an infant crying in the dark.'' Created nature 



120 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 

bears his faintly expressed lineaments, " the labor 
of his hands and the impress of his feet/* But all 
these are but the hidings of his power, and God is 
really known to men only by virtue of the revela- 
tions that he has made of himself by supernatural 
ways, speaking at first '' at sundry times and in 
divers manners by the prophets," and afterward 
by his Son — " God manifested in the flesh.'* And 
as so revealed God is seen in all his works, the up- 
holder and director no less than the Creator of all 
things, the Father of the spirits of all flesh, the life 
and the light of men. He is that sole potency of 
nature in which all things subsist. He directs the 
planets in their orbits and listens to the cry of the 
young ravens. He upholds all worlds, and also 
beautifies the lilies and cares for the dying sparrows, 
and he says to men, '' Ye are much better than 
many sparrows.'* The difficulties that beset the 
doctrine of the divine providence are not found in 
the things propounded to our rational thinking, but 
in that subjective spirit of unbelief which is blind 
to the truth. To be able to see God by an abiding 
perception of the soul, though in a high and peculiar 
sense a divine gift, is also the legitimate outcome of 
well-directed religious culture, rendered with godly 
fidelity and accepted and treasured up with faith. 
The scriptural idea of God, which is the only 



CHARACTER-MAKING. 121 

proper theism, brings to humanity the boon of im- 
mortahty and the future life. As the conception 
of the supernatural delivers the world of sense from 
its isolated and infinitesimal individuality and pre- 
sents it as a portion of the unbounded universe, so 
the notion of God, the Father of eternity, carries 
with it that of the imperishability of spiritual 
creatures made in the image of God. Existence, 
so contemplated, assumes new and inestimably 
more glorious aspects, and man, as a spiritual being, 
is raised above the mutations of material things. 
The misgivings of the psalmist respecting God's 
care for man, because of his almost immeasurable 
littleness as compared with the vastness of the 
heavens, resulted from the temporary earthiness 
of his estimate of man's character and of his place 
among God's works ; and all these were speedily 
dispersed by a better and more truthful view of 
what man is and as known and appreciated by the 
Creator. The dark shadows that seem to our un- 
spiritual minds to separate life and death, time and 
eternity, earth and heaven, melt away and vanish 
in the presence of a steady conception and habitual 
conviction of spiritual realities, disclosing in its un- 
changeableness the broader realm of the divine 
ruler. It is the false science of superficial pretenders 
that seeks to separate itself from all be3'^ond the 



122 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

range of the senses, and so to find no place for the 
Creator in the world that he made and now upholds. 
But, interpreted by the word and the Spirit, ** the 
heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork f * and after these come les- 
sons which reveal the divine fatherhood, the grace 
of Christ, the comforts of the Spirit, and our im- 
mortal hopes. And these are the lessons that should 
be wrought into the minds and hearts of docile 
and ingenuous young persons, not merely as abstract 
truisms perfunctorily enunciated, but as vital, spir- 
itual verities, to be grounded in the heart's convic- 
tions and fashioned into abiding characteristics. 

Christian instruction, if successfully carried for- 
ward to its completed purpose, must extend beyond 
all merely external influences resulting from the 
contact of mind with mind. The recipient soul 
must itself come into new and better habits and 
spiritual consistencies. The virtues which exercise 
the moral nature must be more than objects of 
thoughts, of right choices and duties to be done. 
They must rather become the attributes of the 
soul ; an inwrought and abiding conscientiousness 
which moves and acts spontaneously, and almost 
unconsciously, by its own impulses. It is eminently 
wise to keep our hearts w^ith all diligence, and 
happy is he who so watches and prays ; but more 



CHARACTER-MAKING, 123 

supremely blest are those whose well-instructed 
souls rest in God always, having overcome the evil 
one, and now find God's word abiding in them. 

On the human side the corrected moral character 
appears in the form of conscientiousness, a clear 
perception, and delicate appreciation of social 
obligations, with a steady purpose to obey all their 
requirements ; on the obverse, the Godward side, it 
is a habitual religiousness, the sentiment of the soul 
toward God, with the resultant emotions and exer- 
cises. Though these are called by different names, 
and spoken and thought of as different things, their 
diversity is only apparent, not real. Some have 
vainly attempted to construct systems of morality 
with the religious element eliminated, and others a 
system of religion made up of ceremonials and emo- 
tions without respect to right conduct. The fault 
of both of these is something worse than separating 
what God has joined together; it is the tearing 
asunder and consequent destruction of the essential 
nature of which both morality and piety are the 
necessary outgrowths. The right adjustment of 
man's spiritual being is, no doubt, as to its efficient 
causation, the work of the Holy Spirit; and yet for 
its growth and complete development it is largely 
dependent on human agencies. The plants and 
trees that cover our fields and adorn our landscapes 



124 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 

are indeed the product of the soil, warmed by the 
sunshine and watered by the dews and rains of 
heaven ; and yet they attain to their completeness 
only as they are properly cultivated. And in like 
manner does the soul, though taught and fashioned 
by the divine spirit, grow into habits of right-doing 
and of godliness of thoughts and affections, chiefly 
as it is moved by the words of instruction and by 
godly examples and by all the appropriate agencies 
of Christian nurture. Authority may effectually 
command obedience, and purposed self-discipline 
may impel to the performance of duty ; and as these 
proceed the whole spiritual nature will be fashioned 
into conformity with these active and outgoing im- 
pulses, so changing these external influences and 
purposed impulses into the settled habitudes of the 
spiritual nature. This is Christian character, sub- 
jective rectitude of spirit, the ripe fruit of Christian 
education. Without this fruitage our best efforts, 
with the best appointed methods and appliances 
and the most notable results in other things, are 
still disastrous failures. 

The motives that, in the beginning of right liv- 
ing, usually govern men's conduct, are, no doubt, in 
most cases mixed and imperfect, not wholly un- 
selfish, and often coming short of ideal complete- 
ness. But as the instructed spirit rises into clearer 



CHARACTER-MAKING, 125 

light and becomes more affected by purer and sim- 
pler spiritual forces the love of the right (simply as 
such), the approval of the morally excellent, and 
the admiration of the "beauty of holiness," become 
the all-engrossing and dominating affections and 
impulses. And when this is become a completed 
work right living will become the assured result. 

Before leaving the general subject of these dis- 
cussions, and along the samoline of thought, it may 
be pertinent to consider some of the specifically 
personal characteristics of the mind in which Chris- 
tian education has done its work. One's self is, 
after all, his own nearest and greatest interest — a 
truth recognized and emphasized both in Scripture 
and by the soul's highest and purest instincts ; and 
a proper care for one's self is not at all in conflict 
with any part of moral or religious duty. It is a 
false asceticism, quite alien to correct thinking, and 
entirely other than the consecration of ourselves to 
God and Christ, taught us in the Scriptures, that 
asks for such a kind and degree of self-abnegation 
as would disregard those personal qualities and 
actions which command the approval of the best 
men and even compel the respect of the ungodly. 
Vanity may be a foible and pride a fault, and both 
of these are doubtless among the things from which 
the perfect man has cleansed himself; but self- 



126 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION, 

respect is very nearly related to all the chief forms 
of essential right-mindedness; is itself a virtue and 
the parent or foster-mother of many virtues. The 
maintenance of a chastened and justly moderated 
self-appreciation is especially the duty of scholarly 
and cultured Christians, whose characters and con- 
sequent relations in life devolve on them high du- 
ties and assign them an excellent mission. 

God himself looks with infinite complacency upon 
the soul that bears his image, inwrought by spiritual 
culture; and any man that is renewed and beautified 
by grace may appropriately glory in what has been 
accomplished in himself and in what he has become. 
The wise man may not glory in his own wisdom as 
if it were the highest, nor the mighty man in his 
strength, nor the rich man in his riches ; for all these 
are unworthy of an immortal, god-like soul; but he 
may glory that he knows his God, the author of *'lov- 
ing-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the 
earth;*' and if he duly appreciates the relations into 
w^hich he is brought and the honor that God has laid 
upon him he will not fail also to respect himself, and 
that sentiment will prove to him at once a talisman 
and a recompense. That a man should feel that he 
w^ouldbe dishonored and his better nature affronted 
by low or unworthy practices is wholesome and ele- 
vating in its tendencies. 



CHARACTER-MAKING, 127 

The condition of character indicated by the word 
manhness, though not easy to be analyzed or de- 
fined, although it is very readily recognized, is in- 
separable from any right conception of what belongs 
to the properly-educated Christian ; and to develop 
and fix that quality in the soul should be the special 
purpose of all Christian education. It implies a 
just appreciation of the individual simply as a man, 
irrespective of all accidental conditions, and also 
good-will toward all men ; and beyond all else it 
sees human character ennobled by the divine favor. 
It is not simply tender-hearted kindness and charity, 
(in its lower sense) but a conscientious appreciation 
of whatever is really or potentially excellent, where- 
ever it may be found, and a corresponding disfavor 
toward all opposing qualities of narrow selfishness, 
of unprincipled self-seeking, and pretentious worth- 
lessness. Its complete development and rounded 
fullness of proportions implies the presence and 
effective working of a good conscience, thorough 
devotion to the right, and a consciousness of fellow- 
feeling with God himself. This condition of charac- 
ter never fails to make itself conspicuous, but without 
ostentation, in the whole life and conduct of its 
subjects; and men take knowledge of them and 
render to them sincere homage as embodiments of 
true virtue. 



1 38 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION, 

This disposition of mind is also the surest and 
most excellent safeguard against temptations ; not 
only those of the grosser forms, but also the more 
subtle and, therefore, the more deceptive ; not only 
against ** the lusts of the flesh,*' but equally so 
against the *Musts of the eye,'' the aesthetics that 
outrage ethical purity, and *' the pride of life," 
which exalts itself and disregards all else. The 
Christian who, according to his well-instructed un- 
derstanding and rectified conscientiousness, has 
learned to respect himself in his true character, is 
doubly protected against the allurements and im- 
pulses that would lead him astray, since his quick- 
ened and well-instructed moral sense caused him 
to feel that only the one right way is at all compat- 
ible with his position or worthy of his character. 
To such a one, because of the clearness of his 
spiritual perceptions, the steadiness of his convic- 
tions of right and his conscientious fidelity of pur- 
pose, the call of duty, w^hether to labor or sacri- 
fice, is as the voice of God, to be responded to 
only by instant and cheerful obedience. Aware 
that men recognize him in his true character that 
fact becomes to the true man of honor a perpetual 
and effective stimulus to a becoming course of life 
and conduct and to a devout purpose to live for 
higher than temporal ends. 



CHARACTER-MAKING, 129 

The sentiment of honor, though sometimes 
thought of and considered as belonging exclusively 
to men of the world, is found in its completeness 
only as the fruit of Christian culture. The honest 
man of the stoic age, as sketched by Cicero, is in- 
deed an admirable character ; but even he is found 
in the last analysis to lack the essential element of 
unselfish goodness, as taught in the Sermon on the 
Mount, and as seen in the ideal Christian. True 
honor comprises delicacy of sentiment, a manly 
spirit, a sensitive regard for the rights of others, 
which is the only genuine ultraism and supreme 
moral courage. The slightest touch of any thing 
base, or mean, or false, or unjust is essentially ab- 
horrent to it, since purity, sincerity, integrity, and 
truth are its chief ingredients. Nor is it without re- 
spect to the good opinions of men, but because of its 
supreme regard for the right. AH such opinions 
become worthless in proportion to their departure 
from the standard of true moral excellence. It may 
cause its subject to be pleased with his influence 
over other minds and to desire to be regarded with 
respect and consulted with deference ; but it is 
sensitively jealous of the rights of the lowly and 
of those who cannot care for themselves. It fully 
recognizes the appropriate distinctions of social 
ranks and conditions, giving honor to whom honor 



130 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 

is due ; but it never forgets that even the most lowly- 
have their rights, and since, because of their own 
helplessness, such persons cannot protect themselves, 
the true man of honor, if he has the power, feels 
himself called to become their champion. This was 
the chief redeeming element of the so-called chiv- 
alry of the Middle Ages, which also appeared in a 
much better form in the character of Washington. 
It was seen operating sublimely but madly in the 
conduct of John Brown, and it was the controlling 
element of character, of w^hich its subject himself 
was apparently unaware, that led our martyred 
President Lincoln always to say or do the right 
thing at the right time. But all these were but 
very imperfect approximations to the true ideal, the 
essentially honorable character, which is seen in 
fragmentary features in the principles and precepts 
of the Scriptures, and still more gloriously in the 
manifestations of the divine attributes, which we 
contemplate completed in human kind in Him who 
alone was, in the absolute sense, a perfect man. No 
better model for an object-lesson, in all that is noble 
and lofty and honorable in human character, united 
with all gentleness, brotherly kindness, and purity, 
can be found or called for than is presented in the 
character of Jesus Christ. 

The Christian educator, therefore, needs this 



CHARACTER^MAKING. 131 

model, displayed in its simple but sublime truth and 
beauty, in all his instructions, that its features may 
be reproduced in the susceptible souls and per- 
manently wrought into the characters of those to 
whom he ministers. Education becomes Christian 
just in proportion as the personal Christ is found in 
it in his truth, his Spirit, and his person. 

I have now filled up the time and exhausted the 
opportunities given me to speak to you upon the 
deeply interesting theme proposed for our consid- 
eration. Only a few of its many points have come 
under notice, and the discussion of these has been 
only very general, fragmentary, and incomplete. 
And yet it may be hoped that even these exercises 
will not prove altogether fruitless. You will believe 
me when I say, I place a very high estimate on edu- 
cation and have a profound appreciation of the 
office and work of the educator ; but these should 
be definitely Christian in character and spirit. After 
all, we must come back to God*s estimation of these 
things, ^' Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wis- 
dom, and to depart from evil is understanding.*' 



